Ever what happens to you when you don’t properly change your ostomy pouch on a regular basis? Well boy, do I have a story to tell you. Now keep in mind that this story is going to be a bit graphic and contains a lot of information about ostomies that you probably don’t need to know unless you have an ostomy yourself or are just really interested in them as a pioneering advancement of modern medical technology. Anyways, I must warn you that this story is very graphic and is not for the faint of heart or those with weak stomachs. This story begins when I woke up from surgery, joined by a stoma and a really bad headache. That’s right, I am one of those lucky few people who have had to undergo surgery to have a stoma put in. This is obviously sarcasm, because I believe that I am one of the unluckiest people on the face of this planet.
Well if you’ve had a stoma for any serious amount of time, then you’ll know that things don’t always go according to plan. One such occurrence happened to me a couple weeks ago when I was in line at the Walmart Pharmacy. Let me just say that I have always struggled with having bad gas, and that this is just a part of life that I came to terms with. Before I had an ostomy, it was a lot easier to hold in my flatulence until a more socially acceptable time to pass gas.
However, having a colostomy means that I can no longer when my gas comes out. Whenever the gas is ready to go, it makes its way through my stoma and into my ostomy pouch. Ostomy pouches are made to catch all that stuff that is coming out of your stoma that can no longer come out of your body in the normal way it is supposed to. Do you have any idea how weird it is to never again have to go to the bathroom the normal way? To be honest, I kind of miss the sensation of doing it the old fashioned way. Anyways, sometimes when I get real gassy, my ostomy pouch will fill up way quicker than I was expecting. There is no real way to fix this problem besides letting out some of the gas.
The problem with letting out the gas is that – of course – it smells really bad. Well on this particular day, I found myself knee-deep in a Walmart Pharmacy waiting line, trying to bring my Grandma her prescription medication for the week. Before I knew what was happening, I felt my ostomy pouch start ballooning underneath my clothes. I felt down on the pouch and knew that we were reaching dangerous levels of pressure on that baby, and I knew I only had minutes before I started leaking odor. I quickly went to excuse myself and go to the bathroom, when I tripped on some old man’s cane that was poking out a few feet behind me. As I was falling, I knew that things were about to get horrific. I landed face first, slamming my ostomy pouch onto the tile floor and hearing the poor thing burst at the seams with a great popping sound. The whole Walmart experienced the inside of my stoma that day.
Stoma Health Blog 