The skin underneath my stoma won't heal

I'm talking about a crescent shape around the stoma, with the widest part of the crescent (about 1 cm) underneath it. It's been like this for months and I'm at my wits end on how to heal it. It looked particularly angry and rashy today, and I am worried if it gets much worse it will start bleeding. I am sure it's not an allergic reaction to the wafer (the outer skin is fine). I have tried cavillon spray and various seals, but nothing really helps.

I saw my stoma nurse 3 days ago. She measured my stoma, said the shape had changed, and put on a new convex bag. It was the first time I had tried a convex bag; I liked it from the point of view of feeling more secure and less likely to leak, but my skin was worse than ever when I changed bags today. To be fair, the nurse didn't put a seal on, so maybe the seals do help a bit after all.

But it's a constant struggle to stop my skin from getting worse and I can never actually manage to heal it.

My stoma has a tendency to curl upwards. When it does this, it also develops a 'muffin top', which means at the very base it goes in quite a bit. Even though my stoma does have a spout, I think it is still ending up too close to the skin sometimes, ie more like a 'flush' stoma. It probably doesn't help that I sleep on my side/front (can't sleep on my back) and that my stomach is round and not flat (yeah, I could work out, but the chances of me ever having a flat stomach are zero: even when I was underweight, it was never completely flat).

I just have no ideas on how to protect or heal this bit of skin. It goes through periods of being sore and itchy, which is uncomfortable. Anyone been through similar and found a solution?

Hydro colloid barrier strip.... I have to found out what that is first of all <_<.

I'm also waiting on some Friar's and a few Sensura bags (thanks Larasmom!), but that will probably take about a week to arrive. Meanwhile I will google barrier strips and perhaps see if I can order some: thanks for the suggestion, Smd.

Thanks, Smd.

Had a burning pain under the wafer all day, which has finally downgraded to just feeling sore.

So tired and low right now. Not solely because of the ileostomy, but it really isn't helping. I absolutely hate this thing. The thought of being stuck with it for another 40 years just terrifies me. Quite simply put, it barely works! My diseased colon worked better than this.