Enjoying Spring with a Stoma

Spring is here and it makes me so happy.  I enjoy Easter for sure, but my part of the country starts becoming nice in the weather for being outside.  But if you find out that an ostomy surgery is going to be scheduled and it is for you, your mind starts to wonder.  Sometimes this is a scary moment.  Many people think this is the end of their fun in life.  I was totally afraid that my outdoor life would end once I got my stoma, but in fact, I was totally wrong.  I had a lot of fears that were not necessary and completely wrong.  This was a wonderful thing to find out, but a lot of it was more along the lines of me learning the hard way.  I had seen many people simply give up and live a sedentary lifestyle with a stoma in I was totally not a fan of it at all.  Now I write a ton about my stoma and talk to as many people as I can to help them with their fear.  I want people to live happy and active lives and know how to do it with a stoma.

One of my favorite things to do is be outside and enjoy the wild weather.  But with spring here I can enjoy amazing weather. I have always been an avid hiker, backpacker, and jogger.  These things are what give me joy on a daily basis and something that I really like to do.  So to me letting them go was not going to be a possibility unless there was no other choice. My journey to being outside has been just that a journey. Make sure you are researching and learning all you can to ensure you can do your favorite things too. You may be surprised by what people are doing who have stoma's.

Now it took me a long time to get back into the swing of a gym.  After a surgery you need to heal and recover.  If you have a six-pack and want to jump back into abs you may have to wait a little bit.  You are now more prone to having hernias and no one wants that to happen.  So for me, it was a process of heading to the gym and walking on the treadmill.  This was a huge step because it was outside my home and neighborhood and had a possibility of bad things happening in public.  So that is why I started slow and just walked for some time.  After a week, I added elevation and then slowly moved into doing ellipticals too.  It took me a few months to feel confident in my gear and in my ability to jog in public.  Confidence is not an easy thing to get, but in time it comes and you can really start living again.

My journey took me to a lot of social media in the healing stages. I was lucky to be able to spend time listening to others and learning about gear and how to use it.  It was pretty cool to find athletic people sharing their lives for free. I don't care if they were getting paid by Youtube, they were and still are helping me.  That is pretty darn cool if you ask me.

 

What’s a Parastomal Hernia

A hernia is a protrusion or a wrongful placement of the intestinal tract and usually, it’s via a weaker part of the body, or a defect as well. Hernias usually involve a defect including weekend openings, and also what’s called the hernial sac, and the content of this. Usually, a hernia will occur when an organ gets away from your abdominal wall. 

When that happens, especially with your stoma, and the pathway is around where your stoma is, it’s called parastomal, since it is outside the skin. If it’s via a surgical wound, it’s an incisional hernia. Surgeons usually make incisions to help create a stoma, and usually to help cut off the digestive tract from the other. Whenever you cut this, it does debilitate the strength of the wall. Sometimes, a part of the intestine may lodge up against the walls, and eventually pass through these defects too. 

Usually, parastomal hernias are one of the most common forms of stoma complications. It can happen in an asymptomatic manner, and it only is noticed because the area looks deformed. In some cases though, it can strangle or incarcerate the bowel, which means you have to go in for surgery. About a third of patients deal with this, and it’s also why there is a higher level of recurrence after they try to repair it. 

Usually, they try to prevent this with prosthetic mash, and usually, this is when the parastomal hernia isn’t able to be avoided with hurting, and it sometimes has to be dealt with after a little bit. Sometimes, parastomal hernias protrude out through the skin or settle within the inner parts and layers of your abdomen. 

Usually, these types of hernias come into four different categories. Typically they’re interstitial, where the sac is within the abdominal layers in the wall itself. There is also subcutaneous, where it happens on that part of the skin. There is intrastromal, where it penetrates into the ileostomy spout itself. And finally, you have the prolapse, which is where the sac is within the stoma that ended up prolapsing. The incidence of that usually is very small, or it can be in almost half of the cases, depending on stoma types, and the follow-up length too. Most of these typically don’t have any symptoms, but it can cause life-threating complications if you’re not careful. 

The Risk Factors 

Usually, if you have a few instances where you’ve dealt with this before, you may have some different risk factors inside. If you have had surgery before, there is a chance that it could happen again. The same goes for stoma location. Some are in more common areas. There is also some other factors including how old your are, how obese you are, any sorts of infections that are there, and of course, smoking and other risk factors. 

Quality of Life 

For the most part, you usually don’t have too many complications with this, but you may want to make sure that you buy and ostomy belt. Some people however that deal with symptomatic hernias deal with a much more debilitating quality of life, where it can make them feel a bit more worried, they’re dealing with pain, bulging, and it can make them need to use the toilet a bit more. 

Loose pouches is also a concern too, along with making sure that they are not feeling like they’re being looked at. There is also an increase of needing to rest and feeling tired during the day, along with that feeling of self-consciousness and a fear of going out as well for them.