With A Twist Of The Bag!
Who knew that with a simple twist of the bag you can remove another little irritation of daily bag life. If you were anything like me you were taught in the hospital how to attach your appliances and once returning home followed the same process. It’s only when things go wrong do you really deviate from the norm. Now while stomal therapy nurses are amazing at what they do and they provide a wealth of knowledge, nothing can account for what you learn actually wearing the bag day in and day out. It’s kind of like what you learn at university or college versus what you learn on the job. So it’s not unexpected that the possibility of the bag stabbing you in the leg and irritating you is pretty low on the list of things to tell you and if they did you probably wouldn’t remember anyway as information overload is very common when first becoming an ostomate. And every time you catch up with your stomal therapy nurse if you are lucky enough to after surgery it slips your mind until you walk out of the office and your leg starts getting stabbed again.
Prior to me discovering this, my lovely Aunty had knitted me some super soft ostomy covers with baby wool to stop the rubbing which did work to a point but by simply twisting the bag problem solved! This may be common knowledge for you but it was high on the list of things I wish I knew from the start so I thought it would be nice to share in case there were people like me that just didn’t think about it. It didn’t come to me until I changed to a two piece and clicked it off centre once. But by a simple twist of the bag when attaching it to the wafer if you have a two piece or a simple twist of the base plate on the one piece you can avoid that annoying stabbing that can lead to abrasions. I tend to lean towards the two pieces because if you don’t get the right twist they are generally easy to adjust especially the click styles.
