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.

It’s been a long time since I’ve really been swimming. I used to love to swim, but as things got worse healthwise, I was less and less inclined to go. But my one year old daughter really enjoys going to the pool and now that I am feeling better, I like to go also.

I haven’t actually gone swimming yet, but I have gone to watch, since I felt a bit awkward taking off my shirt with a large bag attached to my abdomen. But that’s about to change. I just got my special ostomy swimsuit from White Rose Collection, so now I’m set to try it out in the next few days! I’ll look a little bit like a dork with my shorts hiked up a bit too high, but the shorts have a higher waistline than normal shorts so it’s not quite so bad. Plus they have a special netting pocket to hold the bad so it doesn’t float around and become obvious.

And my hat’s off to Dave and Tanya of White Rose Collection. They have amazingly good customer service. I couldn’t quite figure out what size to get and so emailed them. I got a prompt reply and they had gone and specially checked how large the waistband stretched to. So I ordered them, but it turns out I picked the wrong size. It wasn’t really the waist that was the problem, but I am 6 feet tall so the shorts just weren’t long enough. I emailed them about it and they said to just send them back and they would exchange them. And lo and behold a little while later I have them. If I had really been thinking it through, I probably would have gotten even one more size up due to my height, but the medium should work out just fine.

I searched for quite a while on the interent and only found one other source for men’s ostomy swim suits–women’s ostomy clothes are much easier to find–but the White Rose Collection’s web site was much more professional, included more data about what I was getting and sizing and was generally more user friendly, much like the owners. So basically, if you are looking for any ostomy clothing (including swimsuits), I recommend checking them out.

I mentioned the other day about needing to update my wardrobe a bit with my new state of health, but I didn’t mention that I had started already. A couple weeks ago, I bought new shoes. That was pretty exciting! I don’t think I have had a new pair since high school (almost a decade ago), since I didn’t really need them with my sedentary job and minimal active activities.They aren’t fancy, but after traveling to New York and walking everywhere, my feet hurt like mad, so I went and picked up some new shoes. So far I’ve only worn them a couple times, like when I went golfing, but it’s nice to have the option to have something comfortable to wear now that I can be more active.

Over the past several years I wasn’t doing very well. And as such, I lost a lot of weight and my clothes were very loose. My pants that had fit properly before were getting quite loose so that I pretty much had to wear a belt to keep them up. (It actually made going to the bathroom every few hours much easier since I didn’t have to unbutton my pants, but could just push them down.) I actually started to think that one pair of pants must have just been really large to start with because they were really large. But as I got sicker and sicker, I cared less and less how I looked so I didn’t really buy any new clothes.

But now that I am gaining my weight back and am passing the 150 mark, I’m going to have to start shopping again as a bunch of my clothes don’t fit any more. And I am back to caring what I look like, so I guess soon I’ll be visit a clothes store to pick up some new things. I guess what I have would be in style as they actually “fit”, but they are sort of tight and the shirts only come past my belt line by an inch or two. And that’s not very workable when I’m not into advertising my ileostomy bag. So I’ll be shopping for some new shirts that are a little larger and loose fitting. And if I gain any more weight, I’ll be shopping for some new pants with an increased waistline.