While you may be concerned about how water will affect your stoma or your ostomy supplies, here’s the good news: normal exposure to water and air will not harm your stoma in any way.
This means that showering, bathing, and even swimming with your ostomy shouldn’t be an issue for you. Learn more about showering and bathing with an ostomy in the video below.
Video Transcript
Hi, my name is Siobhan and I lead ostomy education here at better health. I have an ostomy myself that I’ve had for six years. So I’m very familiar with all the answers about life with an ostomy and managing stoma and output and all that good stuff. One of my jobs is to help coach people through their experiences with their own ostomies.
So I’m here with Sherry and Sherry, you have upcoming ostomies surgery. What’s on your mind about that?
If I want to take a shower and clean around the barrier area, like where the adhesive was, is it okay to go in the shower without my bag? And yeah. Oh, yeah, you can absolutely shower without your appliance on some people actually prefer it that way.
They’d like to share without the bag on. And I’ve completely understand that because we wear these bags all the time and it’s nice to get a break and it’s safe too, because the water won’t hurt the stoma and it helps you clean away any extra adhesive buildup on the skin and this feels relaxed. Just be aware that sometimes that stoma can get a little active while you’re in the shower.
It shouldn’t be a big problem. Cleanup should be fairly simple, but you know, it’s something to look out for when you shower or bathe with your autoimmune system, there’s nothing special that you need to do your barrier and your pouch or may to get wet water. Won’t hurt them. And you can either shower. If you want to feel clean or you can get in the bath tub, take a nice, deep, relaxing bath.
If you want to get cleaned up. Well, that is surprisingly good news. Cause I thought like a cast, when you break your leg, you have to cover it up. Does it matter if it’s a cold shower or a hot bed? It does not matter if it’s a cold shower or a hot bath or repeating those two. Like I said, all of those ostomy appliances are going to do just fine in the water.
They’re going to hold up just great. One thing that I do want to let you know is that if you are in the bathtub or if you’re going swimming with an ostomy, you want to cover that filter on your ostomy pouch. If you’re asked me, pouch has a filter and the filter covers come with the is you’ll notice a sheet of stickers.
In your supply set and you just take a little sticker and you put it over the filter and that way, when you’re submerging your pouch in a bath, or like in the ocean or a lake or the pool, that water is prohibited from coming in through the filter and making your pouch or making your barrier, get oversaturated with moisture, which will make it stop working.
That does make sense. Okay. We talked about cleaning me. What about the system? Do I have to clean the pouch and the barrel? You don’t have to clean the pouch and the barrier. The reason is, is that the pouch itself is just me hold all the dirty, gross stuff. There’s no real reason that you need to clean it.
Some people prefer to do that. That’s absolutely okay. If that makes you feel more confident, but don’t feel like you have to take extra steps because having an osteotomy is kind of enough management of different moving parts and in of itself. So. You don’t have to clean your ostomy pouch. If you don’t feel like you want to, this is very reassuring.
I was worrying about, I guess I don’t have to. It’s easier than I thought. Absolutely Sherry. And I’m so glad because I want you to go out and I feel clean and feel comfortable. It’s really important that with an ostomy sometimes people feel like they aren’t able to get clean. Please don’t have any inhibitions about hopping in the shower and enjoying yourself for more information about all things ostomy from showering and bathing and swimming to exercise.
Nutrition relationships travel, going back to work and the ins and outs of ostomy products. Stick with us in this video series. We’re going to guide you through it all. And thank you for joining us today.
