beverages go straight into bag..

Before surgery I asked an ostomy nurse what sort of effect drinking liquids would have on the output. She said 'none, it's 2 separate systems', which made sense to me and seems to be true for most people....but for me, everything I drink starts coming out into the bag, within a matter of minutes. Red gatorade is fun...looks like a bag full of blood. Does anybody else have this issue and more importantly is there anything that can be done about it? I worry that my body is not getting the hydration it needs and/or my kidneys are not processing enough. My urine looks the same as it has, not terribly dark, but when I take in more liquid, the amount of urine never increases, only what goes into my bag...

What kind of ostomy do you have? Is it just a normal end ileo? If so, you shouldn't see too much output coming out immediately. If you have a loop, then that's a whole different story. Also, does coming right out mean 30 minutes or a couple of hours?

If you are drinking Gatorade (not G2) or sugary drinks, then yes your output will increase and be watery. I don't know why your nurse said "they are different systems." Liquids get abosrbed in the small intestine, into the blood stream, and then filtered by the kidneys which produces urea(?) which then gets sent to the bladder. Then it's out to pee! If you are drinking too fast or too much at once, then your small intestines can't absorb the liquid quickly enough and it will come out your in your bag.

Drink drinks without alot of sugar, sip throughout the day and not drink all at once, and take some immodium 30 minutes before eating to slow things down :).

I learned the absorption thing from nutritionists and MD's that deal exclusively with digestively compromised individuals as I had a high output, high placed ostomy. Talk about fast output! I learned a bit more about absorption than I ever wanted.

Yes, Gatorade most definitely has sugar in it. When I had my ileostomy, I was told to drink Gatorade to keep hydrated because of the electrolytes in it. So, I drank Gatorade. And my bag filled up in what seemed like seconds. And, of course because the liquid was traveling through me so fast, I didn't get the benefits of either the electrolytes, nor did I get the benefits of the liquid, so I ended up with a small bowel obstruction and a hospital stay which included an NG tube, a barium X-Ray that resulted in the bag exploding (and no one in the X-Ray facility at the hospital knew how to change the bag, so they had to get my wife in) and, to top it all off, two nights in the Telemetry Care Unit because my sodium level was so low they were concerned I would have seizures.

So, the moral of the story is.....yes, drink lots of fluid, but make sure the fluids don't have sugar in them. And, just to make things even more challenging, don't take in anything that has fake sugar in it. Fake sugar will cause you to fill the bag up even faster than the real thing. I stuck with water, tea (herbal), milk and Ensure while I was on the bag, and it seemed to control things a lot better.

Good luck to you.

That is incredibly fast. I only had about 10 feet of my intestines above my loop, and stuff didn't come out that fast. Have you told the surgeons exactly how fast things come out? One weird thing I was told that even water will sometimes pull more liquid into the digestive tract from the body (at least when it comes to ostomies in the middle of the small intestines).

My only other suggestion is to drink true oral rehydration solution drinks. Commercially that's Pedialyte. Alternately you can take G2 and add 1/8 a teaspoon for every 8 ounces. Or you can make it. 1 liter (4 cups) of water, 2/3 tsp of table salt, 2 tbsp of sugar + sugar free Kool-Aid or Crystal Light (to taste).

Those formulas are optimized for absorption.

Yup, chicken broth is good (salted chicken broth) is a good replacement. Pedialyte is a gag.

I'm sorry they aren't listening. Boo.