Learn with Comfizz
Looking for ostomy education & related topics, helpful hints & real life experiences? Look no further! Browse our blog for support!
Recently I decided to take advantage of a sale Aura Clothing were having and bought myself a bikini and a pair of jeans. I just wanted to highlight their company for any lady who may be looking for a pair of jeans with ostomies in mind and fancy looking swimwear (that isn’t support wear – please don’t get them mixed up) Like with most small companies they may seem expensive but buying from them allows them to eventually pass the savings back to you in the long run. I am a big advocate of buying small and local when I can as once the company becomes established things become cheaper for them to make and then in turn the product becomes less...
Pet Therapy
Pet therapy is a well known concept and I wanted to talk about how it has had a place in my life and to introduce my new dog Kobe! So I have worked in health care in a variety of settings for all my adult life and I have seen first hand how this kind of therapy can help many people be distracted from the pain they are in. Around the time that I started getting sick my parents got our dog Maxie she was a much loved little tart who loved a belly rub; she was never going to be a good guard dog although being a yorkshire terrier cross jack russell she knew how to bark. She used...
Opinions on surgery can change sometimes
My opinions on my surgeries have changed over time and I certainly don’t feel the same way about ostomies as I did 12 years ago. Why 12 years ago? Well that is when I went in for my first bowel surgery and at 21 years old I had no idea what a stoma was, let alone there was the chance of having one. The surgeon I saw decided he could do the jpouch surgery in one fell swoop which give him his due he did do and I often think now but at what cost? My newly formed pouch wasn’t given a chance to heal by not having the ileostomy which would have been a temporary measure. This popped up...
Dressing with a Bloated Stomach
There are lots and lots of posts on the tinterweb about dressing with a stoma but very few about dressing with a stoma and a bloated or swollen stomach. This is the single biggest thing that I struggle with and sets off my body dysmorphia the most. Hopefully in this post it might give you some ideas on how to help disguise it if it is something that also bothers you. Of course I would love to be the person that sits here and gives you the magic formula to love yourself in your entireity but sadly I haven’t got that far myself yet. However I am trying to gain body confidence one step at a time and I managed to...
Male Mental Health
Male mental health week starts on Monday and this is something that means a lot to me as I have lost two incredibly good friends and one I was close to in primary school to suicide. I honestly don’t know if talking to professionals would have helped two of them as they both had gone through some pretty awful stuff during their 27 years. If nothing else Josh and Ste definitely lived rock star style lives and they say rock stars die at 27. I know many blokes that live their lives bottling their thoughts and feelings up for the fear of “not being man enough” through toxic masculinity. Men are humans and they have feelings too; we should all...
‘A Stoma Patient’s Right To Die’ – The importance of emotional support within a patient’s stoma journey
You may, or may not, have seen the recent news last week regarding a male Inflammatory Bowel Disease patient, aged 34, at Barnsley hospital being given the right to die because he didn’t want to live with a permanent stoma bag. Before I go any further with this blog post, I am going to say that I am in no way making this about me and taking anything away from the man’s struggles & the struggles of his loved ones having to see him get to this dark place in his life. I am merely expressing my opinion & in no way is my opinion fact. It is what I feel and I believe we should all have the right...
Right To Die
You may have seen across social media that in the news a judge in the UK ruled that a man could exercise his right to “control the end of his life” if he needed to have a stoma. I will include both links to the news stories and I can only speak from my own opinion on this matter and euthanasia which you are completely entitled to disagree or agree in part with. Nobody wants to just merely exist and for many of us that was how it felt before we had our ostomies, but there are those of us who genuinely don’t like their stoma and have issues and as sad as it is it shows it isn’t...
What is a flush stoma?
You may, or may have never, heard of this term. You may have also heard it being spoken about along with protruding or retracting stomas. A flush stoma is a stoma that sits level with the abdominal skin level. My experience with a flush stoma I have had issues with this, which was caused by a narrowing just before skin level, just inside my abdominal cavity a few centimeters behind my stoma. The narrowing was causing my stoma to be pulled back down to the skin level. A few things can cause a flush stoma such as surgical technique, a narrowing behind the stoma as I have just mentioned, weight gain/loss and it can also simply just occur over time...
Got Gas?
Gas and ballooning can be a right pain in your out of order bum! But what things can help reduce it or make it more manageable? For me it is one of the biggest things I have to contend with in my day to day ostomy life but I don’t always help myself and I will explain why in a little bit. Here is a short list of things that you can eat and drink that may produce more gas than others – now this is all relative and some foods don’t affect everyone in the same way it is just to maybe give you a light bulb moment. Heck there are still things that make me go DUH! Like...
Stoma Pride
Have you seen the influx of ostomy videos on social media? They come in different forms like tiktok videos or just plain old photos like I do. This week will have partially been down to the fact Tuesday (19th) was World IBD Day and one of the more common reasons for having an ostomy other than cancer but certainly not limited too is inflammatory bowel diseases such as Crohn’s disease or ulcerative colitis. I love that ostomates are finding new and creative ways to show their pride for what in some cases saved their lives – their stoma! Our very own blogger Amy along with other IBD Superheros have been doing videos to songs and doing duets together displaying their...