My Bladder Cancer Fight

I lost all my dignity, eight years, ago when I was diagnosed with bladder cancer. You know, I am glade that it is not in the way anymore. I can now talk about any part of my body without being embarrassed. If it weren’t for the Surgery, Urostomy and the Chemotherapy, I would not be here on the green side of the sod.

Here is my present problem and then I will go into some background.

I had arrived in Florida where, I spend my winters, and before I got completely setup, company arrived. I needed to change my Urostomy Pouch so I quickly went into the bathroom to do so. I got out the new supplies and began to remove the pouch. This is not the normal way that I do this procedure, but I was in a hurry. I had company waiting.

Much to my surprise, when I pealed off the old pouch, I peeled off a couple of layers of skin. Yes, it bled like ….. I got the bleeding stopped and applied a new pouch. This got me through the company. Later that same afternoon, I could see that it was bleeding quite a lot under the pouch.

What was I going to do?

I crawled into the shower and removed the new pouch. I always, except for today, remove the old pouch in the shower with water running across the pouch. The running water helps to remove the glue that holds the pouch to my stomach and lubricate the skin. This is much easier on the tender skin under the pouch. After a few years of wearing a pouch, the skin becomes very tender.

After the shower, I took a good look at the damage that I had done. Things were not good. There was no way that I was going to be able to put any pouch over that raw skin. It needed to heal. So, what do I do? I remembered reading in a Urostomy discussion group, on the internet, about someone else having this same problem. I could not think of anything else to do, so I followed their advice.

I made some pads from towels to cover the stoma area, put on some clothes and headed for the closest Wal-Mart. Here I purchased a box of baby diapers #4, a box of Adult pull up diapers and another tube of diaper rash ointment. Yea, one other thing to buy, a box of mattress pads. I had my supplies. I followed the instruction, as well as I could remember them from the internet. Diaper rash ointment, for those who have never had the pleasure of applying it, it is Zinc oxide which is a water barrier. This will help keep any urine off the skin while it has a chance to heal. The baby diapers #4, not the pull-ups, go inside the adult diaper making sure that it covers the exposed stoma. Done. Let’s see how this works.

Much to my surprise, this procedure worked and is still working very well. Inconvenient, yes but as I stated earlier my dignity went out the window eight years ago. I am on my third week of wearing adult and baby diapers and I am only 68 years old. Things are healing very well but I decided to wait until after the holidays to give the skin a fighting chance before applying any pouches. I only had one concern about this problem and that was about getting an infection. I decided, after the fourth days, to go and see an Urologist to make sure that what I was doing was correct. The Urologist could not find any indications that the area was infected. He was surprised at the amount of skin that was torn off. It was close to four square inches. His only recommendation was to use lots of three in one antibiotic then in about a week use the zinc oxide.

That is my problem to date. However, I have another problem coming up after the holidays. As I stated, the skin is healing well but it appears that there is going to be some scaring. This could be a problem with the sealing of the pouch to my stomach. Well I will tackle that kettle of fish when it arrives. I will keep you posted on my progress after the holidays.

My next post will be on some background about Urostomy, Urostomy pouches, stoma and much more. I will NOT use Medical Terms. A spade is a spade not a bloody shovel.

This Post is continued in a post titled Skin Peeling

Posted on December 21st, 2007 by Neil
Filed under: My Cancer, My Problems, Problem - Skin Peeling