Little By Little

A great thing happened today. I managed to sneak in the teeniest tiniest bit of jogging. I was on the treadmill and planned to walk for 30 minutes. I have my walking speed up to 3.7 now (I can remember when 3.0 seemed really tough!). I decided to walk for 4:45 and then "run" for 0:15 and keep switching it out that way. I ended up with 6 rounds of 15 second jogs. Felt great, no issues at all. I will not push beyond this until I see the doctor again on the 9th, but it felt good just to do a little and break a sweat. I should mention that if you are fresh out of surgery and reading this, don't take it as meaning it's ok for you to get out there and start running if you haven't been cleared yet! I feel fine, but that doesn't mean it's ok for me to be doing it either. I feel comfortable with the minimal risk but I don't want anyone else hurting themselves if it turns out I'm stupid on this one!

So when I changed my pouch again on Saturday, the skin looked so much better than what it did last time. I was a little weirded out because part of the stoma had this purple look to it. I think maybe the 1 1/8" cut I've been doing is a little too small and the stoma is getting pinched or squeezed a bit. The tough thing about stomas is they don't have pain nerve endings so you can be injuring it without even realizing it. I didn't come up with the flange cut size being the possible culprit until after I'd completed my pouch change, so hopefully all is still good. I will change again tonight or tomorrow morning and I think I will draw the 1 1/8" and 1 1/4" and cut in between them. I know 1 1/4" was just a little big, but apparently the next size is too small. It's always something, right? I think I would like to send away for some samples of mouldable flanges to try them out. I guess you just roll it back to the right size or something. I haven't really checked them out much, I just know there is no need to cut and you somehow stretch or roll it to fit. Sounds interesting anyway. I think I also want to get a sample of Sure Seals. They are these plastic film type adhesive things that cover the wafer and make it waterproof. Then I wouldn't have to worry about using the blow dryer on my wafer after each shower. They also do a great job of holding things in if you have a tiny leak.