It's 3am and I was just rudely awakened by my asshole of a colostomy bag. In my deepest sweet slumber Bob (from here on out I'll call my bag Bob. Why? Because sometimes Bobs are just full of shit) decided to rebel and leak nasty waste/fluid all over my abdomen and legs. This is not an uncommon thing in the grand scheme of colostomy because the bag system has essentially three parts:
The adhesive: skin contact paste and/or an Eakin seal, which is a disc made of adhesive foamy, rubbery material. This marries the skin to...
the flange: another adhesive disc surrounded by adhesive tape for skin contact and on the top side a plastic coupler ring designed to create an air and fluid tight seal with...
the bag: just what it sounds like, a plastic or vinyl bag with a velcro sealed end for waste disposal and sometimes an air vent to slowly disperse gas so it doesn't fill with farts constantly. These things together create a nigh-impenetrable fortress of protection against the waste tunneling through your colon.
The problem with this system is the adhesive on the skin side is entended to block solid or semi-solid waste from leaking, not fluid. Even the sealiest of seals breaks down when constantly being faced with liquid waste and for the past five weeks my "food" has been almost entirely liquid. Liquid in = liquid out. It's only a matter of time before the adhesive gives way and leaks happen. This almost always happens to me at night while I sleep so I end up with the enviable surprise of being covered in liquid shit upon waking. Luckily for my nurses and I I'm used to this eventuality so it's not a big deal to get up, towel off and change the bag while they change my sheets/bed and clean up whatever drips followed me to the bathroom. This particular instance was odd because the consistency of the waste was like that of wet, soppy oatmeal. Mmmm...Quaker Ostomy Discharge.
Anyway, now I'm cleaned up, washed, disinfected and newly bagged. Hopefully this is not a sign of things to come as my life already has enough shit going wrong already. I would have posted informative pictures to illustrate the mechanics of a colostomy bag but this computer/tablet is crazy and I'm still not entirely sure how to use it correctly, at least for writing purposes. That's it for now, sorry if this information was gross and/or off-putting but I'm not in the business of candy-coating things, especially candy-coating bodily waste. Yum. Makes you think about chocolate differently, eh?
No comments:
Post a Comment