A good bag-changing experience, yey!

I had a really good bag-changing experience today. This was a surprise, because I had been getting a slight pain around my stoma that normally suggests red-raw skin. When I took the old bag off, my stoma immediately shrank to the touch, which gave it the appearance of feeling rather sorry for itself (!). Despite this, the skin around the edge wasn't too bad, with just a few millimeters of redness that should disappear in a couple of days with some protective powder giving it a chance to heal.

What I was really pleased about was that I tried a smaller cut-out today. Given the redness around the sides, I decided to try making the hole in my bag a bit less wide. The last time I tried this, my stoma decided to rebel and expand as much as it could to avoid fitting through this smaller hole, which meant a hasty re-cutting, which obviously provided an excellent opportunity for said stoma to start playing up and spouting stuff everywhere. Grr. That was a not so great bag-changing experience, but it's only happened the once.

I've found that if I'm not lazy and get up at a reasonable hour, shower, and change my bag all before 10am, then my stoma is calm and easy to care for. It's also smaller (narrower, at least), because it's not passing anything, and so is easier to put a bag onto.

I suppose it's worth noting here as well that my stoma is quite long. Not seriously prolapsed or anything, but varies in length from about 1 to 2 inches and always points downwards (the "top" side is longer than the "bottom" side). At first, I was a little upset by this, as my stoma didn't look anything like the neat, circular bobbles in all of the leaflets I was given, but now I am grateful for this, as it means that all output goes immediately downwards, into the bag, and doesn't hang around near the stoma (or, more importantly, the sensitive skin surrounding it). One day, no doubt, I'll muster enough courage to put a photo on here to show people what I mean and show that not all stomas are textbook in appearance.

Now... time for a cup of tea, I think!