Swimming! What works and doesn't work.

[Jaano711]

Hi,
As a newbie I am about to face my first summer with miss piggy. I love swimming and the beach and spend a lot of time helping out in the water at surf club, or swanning around in our pool. I am not allowed to swim until my bothersome bum and midline wounds heal (latest development is a new staph infection!!). I figure I have some time to sort out how to sure up missy piggy when it comes to the beach and the pool.

Looking for any help on what has and hasn't worked.

Thanks Janette:crab:

 

[Susan2]

Hi Janette

I would have thought that a quiet dip in the ocean might have even helped with the healing - not the pool, though.

I swim a lot in the ocean in summer. Miss Piggy ought to be OK; if you want more security, you might put some tape around the edges of the base of your bag.(I just use Micropore if I think that I need it. Some of the others use Tegaderm film but that's fairly expensive if you are going to use it often.) Or the appliance companies have some products that might help - you could ask your stoma nurse or look in the Ostomy magazine.

You might need to check how Miss Piggy fits under your bathers. I use a deep convexity bag (my stoma is sunken in) and these only come in large, so I need bathers with low cut or 'little boy' legs. Someone here with a stoma bought some very sexy bathers recently - they had almost no back. I'll try to find the pic of them.

 

[Susan2]

Have a look at Misty-Eyed's bathers here

http://www.crohnsforum.com/showthread.php?t=40016&highlight=swimsuit

 

[Nyx]

I've never had a problem swimming. I use coloplast SenSura and all I do when I get out of the water (if I can) is blow dry my base plate on the low setting and it seems to work well. If I can't blow dry (like if I'm at the beach) I just scooch my towel under my bag and wrap the rest of the towel over my bathing suit and just apply pressure with my hand to get out the excess moisture. I've never had a problem with it falling off or anything and I tend to stay in the water for hours. I even use our hot tub regularly and it's fine in there too. There's also a thread on here with some of us in our bathing suits. Just search ostomy and bathing suit and it should come up for you.

 

[robbo87]

I was really nervous about swimming but started going a lot at one point. Went on holiday last month and went swimming for hours at a time in the sea and pool without any problems.

I used to use dansac one piece and they would need changing after even a bath or short time swimming but since I started using sensura click they've been brilliant, I can wear them for a few days and do as much swimming as I like without having problems. I use opsite flexifix waterproof dressing tape around my flange which works really well and keeps everything intact. As a bloke I can't really comment on bathing suits, I used to wear a rash shirt but on holiday I just wore my shorts pretty high and I think I got away with it.

 

[MsOJ]

I went swimming for the first time on Sunday with a mini sized closed bag for an hour and everything was fine. Definitely thinking about going regularly to prepare for my next surgery as I lost a lot of weight and muscle...