Changing Ostomy Pouches On The Fly

If you have had an ostomy for any serious amount of time, then you know all about the challenges and predicaments that one might find themselves in when trying to change an ostomy pouch on the fly or in some sort of precarious situation. It takes a lot of time to get efficient and fast at changing your pouches. The first couple of months that I had my stoma were some rough times.Those months are what we in the ostomy world refer to as the dark ages. It’s the time full of leaky pouches, irritated skin barriers, and a lot of embarrassing moments in public restrooms trying to figure out what the heck is going on down there. Living with an ostomy pouch is no easy task, and honestly, it takes a really tough type of person to be able to handle the extreme mental strain and emotional pressure that comes with living with an ostomy pouch. I know several people in my life who would simply just not be able to handle it. I consider myself a warrior in the medical world, since I have lived and dealt with having an ostomy pouch for so long.

One of the hardest things about having an ostomy pouch is having to change your pouch when you are over at someone’s house. I can remember back to a couple different times in my life where I have had to deal with some embarrassing moments. For example, one time I was at a dinner party with some people from work, and we were all over at my bosses house. Now the thing you need to know about me is that I am not a super extroverted or social person. Consequently, going to social events like dinner parties is not necessarily my strong suit anyways. To make things worse, I was having a particularly difficult time with my digestive system and my ostomy pouch that day. On days where you have a lot of gas in your system, your ostomy pouch will tend to fit a lot quicker with just air and then this will lead to more frequent changes of the ostomy pouch. It is important to know that changing an ostomy pouch filled with gas is different from changing one filled with other types of waste. A pouch filled with gas is simply opened and released into their air, since it is just literal gas.

Consequently, this meant that I was making frequent trips to the bathroom in my boss’s house in order to empty my ostomy pouch. Well, as you can imagine, using that bathroom as a dumping ground for my intense and unceasing gas is not a good combination when paired with a dinner party full of my coworkers. Not only was the bathroom a great stinking mess, the gas started to work its way into the rest of the interior of the house, until eventually everything inside those walls was saturated with the fruits of my bowels.

Most of my coworkers know about my ostomy pouch, so it is pretty safe to assume that most of them knew that the stench was coming from me. Of course no one said anything about it, and people were polite and discreet about keeping their noses plugged. But man did I feel awful – I honestly just wanted to leave.