OstomyMan

I figured I’d take the opposite tack with this post since I don’t have everything figured out about how to extend wear time, but I have figured some things that seem to reduce the number of days each of my bags lasts.

First off, I should start out with reiterating that I use one-piece bags for a number of reasons, but basically because I like them better and have had better success with them.

So here’s my list of not-to-dos if I want my bag to last longer:

1) Let the bag fill completely with gas. Basically this builds up the pressure and the seal is going to be the weakest link, so even if it doesn’t cause a blow out or a leak, it can weaken the seals hold by letting the liquids start to get under.

2) Wear tight clothing across the bag. This seems to happen to me more when I wear jeans than anything else, but if I wear my jeans and belt too tight, the contents of the bag are trapped at the top and seem to wear away at the seal and so the bag doesn’t last as many days.

3) Play with my 1 1/2 year old daughter a bunch. This one isn’t something I’m willing to avoid, but I’ve noticed that when my wife and daughter are away visiting family or I go out of town for business, my bags tend to last longer. I can only assume this is because my daughter loves to jump on my lap and be held and that these pull on my clothes and thus pull on the bag and weaken the seal.

4) Get a bad batch of bags. This one isn’t really avoidable since you don’t know you get a bad batch until you get them. I’ve read online that you can usually call up the company and get them to replace the batch of bags for free, but I haven’t tried this yet, since I have only experienced this twice. The first time I had no clue and I’m just now figuring out that this last batch is in fact not holding up well.

5) Extreme sports. I went white water rafting and basically had my bag fall off so that I was holding it on for the last part of the trip. That wasn’t a whole lot of fun, but since then I’ve learned that there’s water proof tape and I’ve come up with some other ideas, so I’m definitely not planning to let this be a stop to me having fun.

I’m sure I’ll learn more ways to screw up with my bags and to make the wear out faster, but I think those are the main ones I have come up with so far.

Back in November, I had to get my first major “check up” since the surgery back in February to make sure I didn’t have any pre-cancerous stuff going on. I was scheduled to get a flexible sigmoidoscopy. One nice feature of getting a sigmoidoscopy after having a colectomy is that there is no prep. I ate lunch right before I came and it was just fine.

It was sort of funny when the nurse asked when the last time I had eaten was. He was rotely going through the questions and to double take when I said that I had just eaten lunch. But then he realized that the two ends of the intestine weren’t connected anymore and off we went with the rest of the questions.

Then I think that was about the last fun part of the procedure. Despite having no prep, having a large tube stuck up your butt and then having a bunch of air pumped in isn’t very much fun. Though they did move a monitor so that I could watch what they were seeing, which was neat.

It turns out that I have hardly any “normal” intestine left down there. There were only a couple of little bumps where there should have been a whole bunch of “villi”, the wrinkles that absorb everything. I guess those bumps are called “pseudopolyps”, and were actually the last few remaining portions that were relatively “normal”. But he needed to take biopsies, so most of those are gone now too 🙂

It was interesting to see everything. It was really the first time I had been able to watch while they did one of these (it was my third, not counting colonoscopies). But I think it reinforced my idea of not getting a pouch right now. Maybe sometime in the future, but right now things are still too inflamed and I don’t think it would go over well.

So what was the final determination after looking in there? I have colitis! Big surprise. And after waiting a month for the results of the biopsies (some breakdown in the line happened because they were actually done after a week), I called up and found out……that I have colitis. But that’s all I have so that’s good. No cancerous stuff to deal with and I don’t have to go back to the doctor again until May (and that’s just for a regular talking appointment, no scoping).