Things to Know About Colostomy Management

The importance of managing your colostomy becomes even more important when you have to do ostomy irrigation. You don’t want to experience stool excretion accidently especially when you are doing ostomy irrigation.

It largely depends on the type of colostomy surgery that you have got. The location of your stoma and ostomy play an important role in how easily you end up training your colostomy. Remember, when your stool starts advancing towards the point of excretion, it is a liquefied waste that carries more water which has to be absorbed your colon. By the time it reaches the point of excretion, it is a fully formed hard stool which has given most of its water content to the colon. It means that if your colostomy has left a bigger portion of your colon intact, your ostomy bag is going to collect more formed stool.

But if the colostomy is ascending, the stool that will come out of your stoma will be more liquid; and it will be more unpredictable at the time of its evacuation. The transverse colostomy will result in pasty and softer stool which will not be fully liquefied but it will still be unpredictable. The descending, or sigmoid, colostomy allows you to have more of your colon to be there. It means that the stool coming out of this ostomy will be more formed. It will be predictable quite like the scenario when you had your entire colon intact. You can train this descending colostomy in accordance with your diet and irrigation routine.

A descending colostomy is easier to manage because the stomal output it results in is not liquefied enough to cause irritation in the peristomal skin. But it doesn’t mean that you are better off without a skin barrier if you have a descending colostomy. You need to wear a skin barrier to ensure better protection of the skin around your stoma. The ostomy bag you will need to use with a descending ostomy is the close-end pouch. Once it collects the stool, you are going to have to replace the bag.

But if you have an ascending or transverse colostomy, you are going to need a drainable pouch which can be emptied whenever you need. The best practice is to empty the bag when one-third of it gets filled with the stool. Be sure to empty the bag before going to bed. Alternatively, you can consider using a night-time bag which can be connected the main pouch by the means of a connecting tube.

Diet after Ileostomy Surgery

Many people, after having an ileostomy, ask questions about the ileostomy diet. But the matter of fact is that there is no such thing as ileostomy diet because an ileostomy is not a sickness or disease. You can eat foods which you have been eating in the past. However, you are going to have to consult your doctor to have a diet plan if you are affected by disease.

But yes, you may have to follow a diet plan right after the surgery for a few weeks. Your doctor may suggest you the diet that result in less residue. It means you will have to stick with the diet that is easy to digest. You will have to avoid eating raw fruits and vegetables because they can make your digestive tract do a little more than usual hard work. So, your physician may put a restriction on some of the foods for you.

But it will be wrong approach to try eating every food for which you have got the green signal by your physician. Eat one food in a day and divide it into smaller meals throughout the day. Chew your food well while eating. Make sure that you are not putting any burden down on your digestive tract. The purpose of having smaller meals is to help you determine if a specific food item turns out to be burdensome for your GI tract. The immediate impact would be diarrhea or odor. This way, you will be able to eliminate that food item from the list of foods that you can eat. It normally takes six months for your body to get used to the new system.

You have to make sure that you are eating a balanced diet only. It’s just your excretory system which has got the change. Remaining organs of your body are the same ones that require energy from proteins, minerals, vitamins, fats and carbohydrates that you have to get from the foods such as vegetables and fruits, dairy products, meat, fish, and legumes which are high in proteins.

You will have to watch out for the foods that can result in watery discharges. Certain foods can cause cramps or obstruction in the small bowel. Sometimes, foods form a cluster which is not very easily digestible. If such thing happens, the water is squeezed out of that bunch and goes into the ostomy bag, while pulp remains there. Foods that can cause such problems should be either avoided or consumed in small amounts.

You are going to have to pay attention to your water intake. One quart day is the minimum recommendation. Insufficient water intake care results in dehydration and loss of electrolytes which are very much essential for your health.