"doing too much"

Haha. Eva lou is AMAZING.
all you folks are, really!

I cant wait for a naked shower. Actually I havent showered yet :/

Still sitting on the edge of the tub and just washing up. Except when I spilled poop all over myself. I thought I was going to have to change my wafer so I just hopped in. But it cleaned up well and didnt lost much adhesivness.

How soon after surgery did you do a naked shower Eva?

I'm not Eva, but thought I would jump in on the showering talk anyway!

When y'all say "naked shower", do you mean this as in showering on the day you change your wafer? If so, what I usually do is hop in the shower with everything still attached and do all my normal hair/body/face washing and rinsing. Then I take off my bag and wafer and wash the area all around my stoma with plain old dial soap...no lotions or stuff like that in that soap. I will rub off any extra bits of adhesive, rinse really well and sometimes just stand there for a bit, enjoying being totally naked for a bit! After the shower I pat dry the area around my stoma and then do a little toilet paper hat/wrap around him, to catch anything that might output while I'm doing everything else. I try and do most of my post shower routine before putting the new wafer on, just giving my skin a little time to breathe. I shower naked every time I change my wafer, unless I'm changing mid day and don't need a shower just then. I have done this since my first solo, post-surgery changes.

I also do "semi-naked" showers most every time I take a shower, meaning that I snap off my bag and shower with my stoma exposed, but wafer still on. I have also done this since my first shower after getting out of the hospital, and I took that shower as soon as I got home from the hospital. It felt glorious!!

Of course, both of these methods carry the risk of pooping in the shower and on your feet....but I got over seeing and being in contact with my poop some time ago! :P

UCwhat? said...

I have also done this since my first shower after getting out of the hospital, and I took that shower as soon as I got home from the hospital. It felt glorious!!

Yes the first shower home after leaving the hospital always made me feel human again. The shower was always a little tough but well worth it.

I can't wait to go swimming again, I am still healing up from my last surgery so a few more weeks but for now no soaking in the bath, hot tubs or swimming while my wound heals.

I don't do naked showers anymore. I never got used to the feeling of watching the stoma outputting in the shower; it always irritated and bothered me. (I didn't want to watch poo coming out of my stoma any more than I wanted to watch it come out of my ass when I still had a colon.) On top of that, the white floor was starting to stain even with rinsing the output down the drain. Pluot suggested that I stopped showering naked; took her advice on board and since then I have never taken a shower without the bag on.

Don't understand how everyone is so blasé about dealing with the stoma and poop squirting all over you, tbh. Can't see how that aspect is any better than Crohn's. In fact it's actually worse for me, because I was still continent when I had Crohn's.

Re the painkillers. There's no easy way of getting off opiates. I certainly didn't have any doctor who had a clue how to guide me, so I had to make my own withdrawal plan; it was probably way too fast, given the horrors of my withdrawal. My skin was also ****ed up for months afterwards. But I wanted these drugs (oxycodone and Pred) out of my system extremely badly, so I stuck it out.

Post Edited (NiceCupOfTea) : 7/21/2014 7:38:50 PM (GMT-6)

I just eat 4 - 5 marshmallows with a hot cup of tea before I get in the shower. No output at all. I love my naked showers.....have a hard time getting out on those days!

hi everyone! When I say naked shower, it's just that- everything off, wafer & bag. I usually do one on change day- in the AM my stoma is pretty quiet, so I just take everything off & hop in the shower. Then apply new stuff when done. Other times, I either shower with everything on, or just take the bag off & shower with just the wafer on. I like to give my skin a break. Very rarely does the stoma output- maybe a little int he showe, no big deal. If it starts to output while I'm drying off, I just catch it with some TP & flush it. I was pretty incontinent too, pre-surgery, so I've found that I had way more poop on me before my ostomy than now. I haven't had to hand-rinse & wash a pair of undies since then. And- I can actually wear white underwear now! Nice!!!!

For real? If you don't understand how terribly humiliating and debilitating it is to be crapping your pants when it's least expected then you're very lucky!

It is such an incredible relief to be able to go out without having the fear of that occurring. Having experienced that, I can certainly understand how seeing a little poop in the shower is no big deal. You can't compare one thing to the other. And although I'm quite new to this, (just over four weeks) I don't consider myself incontinent.

On a side note @NCOT I thought it was very nice how you offered to send someone on another thread some samples of a product that you have. The people on this board are just great!!

Oops! Thanks for reminding me: brb... >.>

There is absolutely NO comparison between being bowel incontinent and having a stoma! NONE! When you have no bowel control, and have diarreaha that is usually full of blood and mucous in a diaper, many times a day...the clean up is no where near as quick and easy as emptying a bag. Not to mention the humiliation and self conciousness that go with it! Rushing through your house, through a store, down the hallway at work while crapping in your pants....hoping none leaks out and wondering how you will manage to clean up that mess and change into a new diaper while in a stall with others nearby. Having an ileostomy does NOT equal incontinence in the same sense and I would choose a stoma a million times over compared to how I was living before.

I have had quite a few leaks in my bed....and no, the cleanup isn't as quick and easy when something like that happens...but still, it was WAY better than crapping my pants in a public place and dashing to the nearest bathroom with an overflowing diaper. And that happened to me on a daily basis for months!

I wouldn't have minded just having the diarrehea, it's the fact that I had absolutely no control over it that made it completely awful. That is something you wouldn't understand unless you experienced it in the way many of us have. I don't wish it on anyone.

I'm not suggesting you have to be cool with having to deal with a pooping stoma or getting poop all over yourself. The level of comfort and acceptance with those things will be different for everyone. I'm just saying that having a stoma in no way compares to constant bowel incontinence without a stoma!

Urgency seems to be more of a UC thing... well it all depends where in the GI tract the inflammation is. Lower down/rectal inflammation causes urgency and incontinence. so if you weren't too bad off in your rectum, you got to skip that symptom. Doesn't mean there aren't a million more terrors associated with having a messed up colon.

But yeah... crapping your pants sucks. I have checked out at stores with my jacket tied around my waist... smelling like crap... and trying to make sure poop wasn't leaking out of my FULL shoe and on to the floor.

I have had one accident with my stoma. Luckily my cell phone was in bed with me. I called my husband and he came and saved me. lol. I was COVERED in crap. after cleaning myself up in the shower... I cant imagine having had to remove the sheets from the bed, etc. thank GOD for my hubs he did that while I was in the bathroom. But I also couldn't have even gotten up from bed without getting crap everywhere... so i am glad he was home and could help me wipe up.
sure, it was embarrassing, and disgusting... but, i'll take one bag accident in the last 2.5 weeks over what I went through the last year. lol.
but yeah.. it did still suck. a lot.