No....no it's not. After my second surgery I was given a new type of illeostomy bag, one that had a thicker wax seal but wasn't much different than the last one. After the infection was dealt with things were fine. I was dealing with one problem though that I could not find a solution too....the skin rash! Oh...my....gosh this was terrible. You see, when you have a bag on your stomach and your intestine is constantly pumping out diarrhea into it, you're going to get skin contact, this is normal. However, when the new stoma was made, the whole where the feces came out of was on the side rather than on the top (this was probably due to the rude doctor I had to deal with and who really needs to lose her job....*cough cough*) Anyway, because of this the feces that was coming into my bag was getting under the wax seal of the bag and not only did this lead to the occasional leak and terrible midnight wake up call, but it also led to a horrible, burning, rash type of something around my stoma. I could not for the life of me get it to go away. It burned and hurt and nothing helped. There were nights when I would pop extra pain pills and lay down in tears because the pain was so bad.
I did however (eventually) discover that changing my bag daily helped a little. The only problem to this was I had to order supplies and extra bags ALL THE TIME! One bag should typically last 3 to 4 days, but I was changing them daily. So I had to call and tell the guy that I needed more every few weeks and had to tell him I needed illeostomy bags and it was embarrassing but I did it. I also had the thought that the final surgery was coming up and after that everything would be BETTER! Right?! Right? Please tell me I'm right.....(Hint.....it doesn't get better for a while.)
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