Maybe your stoma surgery is coming up in a few weeks time, or perhaps you’ve had your surgery recently, a question that’s likely to be on your mind is ‘how long will it take to fully recover?’. This entirely depends on the person and the type of stoma surgery they’ve had.
As a general guide, it’ll take around 6 weeks until you can start to get back into your normal routine. There are, however, ways in which you can help to ensure you recover properly and without any setbacks. Read on to find out how you can help yourself to recover from stoma surgery as quickly as possible.
Keep relatively active
Firstly, you need to make sure that you keep your body moving throughout your recovery. Try to keep active by doing a little bit of walking each day, and gradually increase the distance each day. As you get further through your recovery time, you’ll find that you’ll start to feel stronger and that you can start to do more exercise.
However, while it’s important to keep yourself mobile, you must avoid any strenuous activities such as biking, jogging or weight-lifting until you’ve been given the all-clear from your doctor. As a general rule, you should avoid lifting anything heavier than a kettle in the first few weeks after your surgery.
By keeping mobile, you’re increasing blood flow to the area around your stoma which can help you to recover quicker, not only that but it also stops you from getting stiff! You don’t, however, want to cause yourself any more damage by doing too much whilst you’re still recovering, so take it easy and listen to your doctor’s advice.
Eat well and keep hydrated
We all know how important diet and nutrition is, from keeping yourself healthy to providing the energy you need to go about your daily activities, ensuring you have good nutrition can provide a whole host of health benefits. It, therefore, doesn’t come as a surprise that diet and nutrition are really important in the recovery process after surgery.
Maintaining a balanced diet with plenty of protein can really aid the recovery process. However, your doctor may advise you that you need to follow a certain diet, such as a low-fibre one, depending on your situation.
You can find out more about diet and nutrition after stoma surgery here. (link to evergreen piece)
Make sure you get plenty of rest
Sleep is absolutely essential in recovering from almost anything, so it’s really important that you get enough shut-eye!
Listen to your doctor’s advice
This may seem like a really obvious one, but it’s quite a common occurrence that patients will listen to certain aspects of their doctor’s advice and ignore others. It’s really important to listen to what your doctor or stoma nurse say and to ask them if you’re unsure of anything related to your stoma surgery recovery, after all, they’re there to help you!
Don’t rush the recovery process
Finally, don’t rush through the recovery process! While you obviously want to recover and get back to your normal routine as soon as possible, it’s so important that you give yourself the time you need to fully recover. If you don’t, you could end up causing damage that will take you even longer to recover from!
You can find out more about recovering from stoma surgery here.
Related Products
Primo®
Our Primo® range includes drainable bags with clear windows to help make positioning easy and allow easy access to view your stoma.
Learn more and order free samples here
Alginate®
Natural alginate is impregnated into the adhesive on our Alginate® range of bags. Known for it’s healing properties, it quickly heals sore skin and prevents further skin irritations.
Learn more and order free samples here
Easylease® spray
With antiseptic tea tree oil, Easylease® spray is no-sting and is ideal to help remove your bag easily and painlessly, without leaving any sticky residue.
