What Is It Now?

Well, here's the thing about having a chronic illness: it will always keep a person wondering what's going to happen to you next.  For example, several weeks ago, I wrote about my issue with a partial blockage.  I'm just going along through life trying to eat healthy, watching my carbohydrate intake as I also have Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome to deal with and thus am subject to insulin resistance and (BOOM!), along comes pain that I'd never experienced before, uncertainty as to what to do about it, and educating myself on how to possibly keep it from happening again but still being able to eat within the guidelines that will improve my overall health in the future.

What else keeps me on my toes and wondering when it's going to happen again?  Those nasty leaks from my ileostomy appliance like to happen at times.  I'll go several weeks, months even, and be doing well with wafer adherence and wear time and then (BOOM!), I've sprung a leak.  Most recently, it was after a routine, scheduled, before-bed-time bag change.  I woke up at around 4:00-4:30 in the morning and there's a mess waiting to get even messier.  (Not to mention that I had trouble falling asleep that night and didn't fall asleep but just a few hours before that.  And I would need to be up only a couple of hours after this time.)

Another issue that I've had recently, that was also ostomy related, was some major itching at the wafer site.  My first concern was that it was leaking.  However, it never actually had that feeling.  It was just itching almost non-stop.  For those of you who have an ostomy, you know how impossible it is to scratch an itch under a wafer.  For those of you who don't have an ostomy, imagine how it is to have on laced up shoes, and then have your foot start to itch.  But maybe you're not in a position to remove the shoe to scratch the itch.  Maybe people who've ever had a cast for a broken extremity can relate to this as well.  I had changed my wafer and bag just a couple of days before (I strive for a routine of changing ever five days), but I had to get this itchy thing off.  There was no leak.  I just had some slightly reddened skin.  I cleaned the area well with warm water, dried the area really well and applied my new wafer and bag.  Why did this happen?  I don't know.  The temperature is much warmer now, so maybe it was heat related?


And then there's health insurance.  In the eleven years that I've had an ostomy and have ordered ostomy supplies and with the various health insurance companies I've used and policies that I've had, I've never had a limit on the amount of supplies that I could order.  But earlier this week, I called to order my supplies in bulk (I order supplies in larger quantities once or twice a year) and the individual I talked to said my insurance would only cover enough supplies for one month at a time.  I suppose that since the brand of ostomy supplies I use packages their ostomy bags in a box of twenty, that makes my monthly allotment one box of twenty bags and two boxes of wafers as they are packaged at ten per box.  I find this aggravating. My need for ileostomy supplies is 24/7 for the rest of my life.  My husband pointed out that I should be okay with the allotted amount.  But I don't understand why an insurance company gets to tell me what I need.  It's just another part of dealing with a chronic illness though I suppose.