Keeping hydrated

I've never been overly good at drinking as much water as I should, but now that I don't have a colon, this has become a more significant issue. As far as I know, the main job of the colon or large intestine is to slowly absorb water and salts from food as it passes through. If you don't have a colon, you don't get the benefit of this additional water and salt and, therefore, you both need to generally intake more through drinking and keep an eye on your hydration levels, because you can dehydrate very quickly (e.g. if you are sick) and this can be very dangerous indeed.

So... I've been trying to find good ways to remind and/or encourage myself to keep drinking. If anyone has any recommendations, I'd greatly appreciate them, as I'm genuinely finding this tricky; I simply don't think to drink and, as a result, am finding myself getting tired easily and having an increasing number of dehydration headaches.

So far, my attempts have included:

• having a refillable bottle at work, which I refill whenever I get a cup of tea (strangely enough, I don't have an issue with reminding myself to drink tea!) and endeavour to finish before I allow myself another cuppa;
• drinking fruit squash rather than water (squash should be added to my list of things for a hospital stay - they like you to drink loads in hospital, but water at room-temperature is hugely unappetizing; nearly everyone else on my ward had already learned this from experience and had a wide range of different flavours with which to improve their water);
• having a large glass beside me at home. I get frustrated having to constantly get refills, so having a large glass helps. I think I'm going to expand on this at work and get a jug so that I don't have to keep going to the water point.

Any other ideas? :)

A trip to the Isle of Wight

My husband & I returned today from a trip to Cowes Week, where we had a marvellous time at an event hosted by Talisker whisky. We had a lovely whisky tasting - that I'll be writing up on SummerFruitCup.com this week - ate fish & chips not more than 10m from the sea, and finally set sail (figuratively speaking) aboard a catamaran to watch Master and Commander at the world's first "sail-in cinema". That's like a drive-in cinema, but on water!

The screen looks tiny, but I thought that the sail-in cinema worked well.

I'll admit that I was worried at the prospect of going on a boat (having experienced some less-than-ideal toilet facilities on some smaller boats), but I took three loperamide tablets when we were having the fish 'n' chips and that seemed to slow my output down enough so that I only had to empty twice during the evening.

A simple, but helpful tip from the IA Support forums gave that I took advantage of was putting a couple of sheets of toilet paper into the toilet bowl before emptying. This meant that, when flushing, - and I apologise if this is too much information for some - everything gets swept away in one neat flush. I use a similar method when I have to empty in toilets on trains, which are much worse than the ones on this boat. Sailing is just one more little milestone to add to my post-ileostomy list!

I'm also pleased to announce that I successfully managed my alcohol intake on this trip, which is something that I'm very happy about. We tried four different whiskies and I had them all, but I also drank a litre of water at the same time and both felt fine after and had no watery output. During the evening, I had a couple of long cocktails and another whisky, but all spread out over a few hours and accompanied by another litre of water.

My final challenge was when we got back to the hotel where we were staying and we decided to have a nightcap with some friends we'd met during the day. I thought about it and went for a pint of coke. As a result, no hangover, no disorientation, and no diarrhea. Excellent! No doubt I'll have a few more bad experiences as I continue to practice finding this new balance of hydration, but I'm pleased to have found it this once.

The day that alcohol was not my friend

I am seriously ashamed. The other day, I was drunk. Very drunk. So drunk that I was ill, which has only ever happened once before (when I was much younger and more naive), and it was completely my own fault.

I've mentioned before that my husband & I go to some gin events. My favourite tipple is scotch whisky. We enjoy alcohol and probably drink more of it than lots of people we know, but it's very rare that we drink excessively. When I had recovered from my operation to the point where I felt strong enough to try a drink, I did. And I was fine. No problems whatsoever. So the next time we were out, I tried two drinks, and - again - I was okay. The other day, I was not okay.

I know why I wasn't okay: I didn't drink enough water. I was ridiculously stupid. There was one pitiful moment where I went to the bathroom, only to be shocked at seeing my bag. I had genuinely forgotten that it was there and - more seriously - that I now dehydrate even more quickly than I used to. Subconsciously, I think I wanted to forget about it and just "be normal" again for the evening. I think this is covered in my occupational health report by the comment that I "haven't yet come to terms with the long-term effects of [my] illness". <sigh>

The main reason I'm posting this is to encourage anyone with a new ileostomy to keep on top of their hydration, especially when drinking alcohol and in the warmer weather. From various forum threads that I've read, alcohol seems to effect different ileostomates differently (some people find themselves less likely to get drunk than beforehand, whereas others have given alcohol up completely), but the lesson that I've learned - the hard way - is two-fold:

1. Take it slow. So slow that there's absolutely no danger of your "forgetting" to take it slow. Basically, ensure that you stay self-aware.
2. Keep yourself well-hydrated.

I'm going back to only having two (alcoholic) drinks on an evening out and we'll see where things go from there.