As a woman you generally have a fashion item that you love to own, shoes, hats, gloves, coats, jewellery, clothes, make-up, perfumes, all of the above or anything else but so many women love Handbags. It has been noted that I have a thing for handbags they don’t have to be designer or anything like that. I just like handbags kind of ironic don’t you think. I rotate my handbags very often I’ve got to use them all at one time or another haven’t I? As an Ostomate what is the first thing that you should never be without? A spare bag!

When I first had my Stoma I basically didn’t give much thought to being prepared for a bag leak or a blow off. In truth I am just as crap now as I was then but I am always organised for trips away. Holidays in the camper etc, but average normal day to day pretty crap! In the early days of being an Ostomate I would go out clubbing, dancing, partying I would often take a spare bag in the pocket of my jeans, like that was really going to be a help! I did have loads of incidents but I improvised with tissues before I could get home. My attitude towards being organised has somewhat changed of late but I still go on nights out without a spare bag and wing it.

Let’s face it if you have a Stoma a lot of us are organised when it comes to having spare products for the odd leak but lots of people like me are probably pretty slack. A few weeks ago I had a bag blow out at work this was when my improvisational skills really came into play. I was heading off for a new tattoo and low and behold an hour before I was due to leave Billy blew!! (Bloody little shit) I raided our first aid kit using plasters, wipes & micropore tape I was able to fix myself up. The leak was under the base plate so it would be manageable for a few hours. As long as I don’t eat a whole Onion, all will be sorted. As I was about to leave, getting my stuff together, for the first time in goodness knows how long. I found a spare bag in my handbag, off came my handy work which I was pretty impressed with actually, cleaned up new bag on.

I have had a similar situation to this before whilst working for another company I was using a different handbag that day (you see where I am going with this) major bag blow. So bad that I had to clean myself up & buy a new pair of trousers. Once again I used Lisa’s top improvisational skills sorted myself out back at my desk in 20 minutes. No one non the wiser they didn’t even notice I was wearing different trousers. The moral of this story is you can have a million handbags but there is only one bag that counts!