Exploding Bag

I wore a 9 inch bag all day yesterday and decided I would just sleep with it because I was changing the entire system today and did not want to dirty up a new bag just for one night...I normally wear 12 inch bags to sleep....well, when I woke up at 3am, the entire bag was filled with gas and poo....When I took the clip off, the contents of the bag exploded everywhere. What is up with that? Has anyone ever had that happen? I literally heard the pop right before the contents exploded out. All I could do was laugh because it was so unbelievable. I assume the bag was under pressure and I am lucky I woke up when I did or else the bed, me, and my husband would have been covered in poop.

 

Then the other night I woke up from a sound sleep because I felt a bug crawling on my leg. Well, my husband woke up, found a beatle in the bed, took it and threw it in the toilet....when he came back to bed, he told me not to move....he said, "your bag is not on."  What the heck? I had ripped the bag off the wafer without even knowing it in my frenzy to get away from the bug....EWWWW, I hate bugs. Well, somehow I managed to only get 3 drops of poop on the bed because I had emptied just a couple of hours earlier and the bag, by some miracle, landed with the hole up...

 

All I can say is this....Life with an ostomy is such an adventure!

     Hey Tracy!  Have you gone back to work yet?  What type of bags do you use?  I am having the best luck with the one piece Coloplast with filter.  However, I wonder how you can keep the filter from getting poop on it?  I taped it up thinking that maybe it folding over caused the poop to get on it, but nope, still got poop on it.

     What did you eat that gave you so much gas?  Baked beans?  I ate some baked beans at the Borgata buffet yesterday afternoon and man did my bag ever toot away!  LOL!

Hey Tracy,

I will return your call today. BUT just wanted to respond to your exploding bag story. YES WE ALL GOTTA WRITE A BOOK.

My entire first year, I woke up with the bag totally inflated like the good year blimp on my stomach. The bag never actually popped, but when I unrolled the end to empty the contents shot out due to the gas pressure. Was glad I woke up those nights.

I do promise you that in 6 to 9 months this will stop and you will wake up with very little gas inflation and only about a 1/3 full once or twice per night. You are doing great. Hang in. But this is the "adaptation" process where your small intestine is still speedy. Gradually it starts to act more like a colon and slows down for you. Do not worry it should not slow down to your colon's speed (or lack thereof) it should slow down just enough because your small bowel transit was normal on testing. You will be fine.

Rosemary

Where do you get these EZ-vents and how do you put them on. Sounds like a plan. Rosemary

They are called Osto-EZ-Vents. If you have an Edgepark catalog, it is on page 43. Their website is www.kemonline.com/content/home/.

I use them too. You have to clean a spot on your bag with alcohol and then stick on the vent, then poke a hole so the vent will work. It's pretty easy.

_Eric

Be sure to clean the pouch with 91% alcohol--no less. And do not use the premoistened wipes. It's all in the directions.

Eric
I use a one piece pouch and manage to pull the vent to the stoma opening and cut the hole with small scissors. It works better than poking a hole. My way rarely plugs up.

Dan