I just got back from Cleveland yeasterday (step one of 2-step revision). First time having a stoma in almost four years and I naively thought it would be same as last time. But then my stoma kept shrinking back toward the skin and I started using the concave pieces. Paranoid as I am I was convinced it would start slipping back into my abdomen. One of the surgeons said that wouldn't happen.

Last night I was changing my bag when I noticed there's a space between the edge of my skin and my stoma. You can see the inside of my skin (the white fatty part). Obviously, worry wart over here was terrified, but this morning, my local surgeon (who did my first set of surgeries) said it was okay as long as it's not bleeding. Really? Of all the wierd medical stuff we know as normal, this is one of them?

Sara,

I had something similar happen with my first loop ileostomy. The stitches on the stoma pulled away from the skin in one area. The ostomy nurse was concerned, but my surgeon was not. The nurse told me to put stoma powder over the gap & dab it with a barrier wipe before putting on the wafer. I actually found that using an Eakin seal, Adapt ring or Coloplast strip helped protect the area better.

Maybe Jan or Shell or others with more knowledge/experience can reassure you more.

Anjuli

Hi Sara,
I was just at the docs tuesday with this exact same problem. Last week my stoma was sinking below my skin on one side and it really freaked me out. So I went to my family doc and he said it was normal and that stomas are like belly buttons. Sometimes they're outties, sometimes they're innies.

Then I went to see my ostomy nurse on tuesday and she said it was normal too. She just said that for the first little bit I should use the powder to help the redness and stinging go away - and then she gave me a new pouch to try which actually pushes the skin around the stoma down so that the stoma pops out more and there's less of a chance for leaks.

Hopes this helps. Don't worry too much though. They told me it is perfectly normal and there is an extremely low chance the stitches that are holding your stoma out will come apart. For me they think that maybe because I've gained some weight too that my tummy may be a bit bigger now than when I got the ileostomy and that my be making it inverted as well..

This happened to me too, a week or so after my surgery. It must be pretty common because no one seemed concerned about it. I just put the powder on every time the wafer was changed and the skin gradually filled in. It took a few weeks but it is filled in now.

My stoma shrunk quite a bit about a week after surgery, leaving a gaping hole between the stoma and the skin. I was pretty freaked out but was told that it was fine. I just put a bit of powder around the area when doing bag changes and it healed itself.

wow, thanks for all the responses! So I guess it really is normal. That makes me feel better that it'll fill in. I was wondering how it was possibly okay that I could see the inner layers of my skin, even when my surgeon that I totally trust said it was okay. Right now I'm using Stomahevisve powder anyway because I'm allergic to isopropyl alcohol. I'm also using the seals (coloplast, I think) and a convex 1-piece system, though I haven't reordered yet so I don't know the brand. I'm just a week and a half out and this is the first time to do all this without steroids, so I have some paranoia about the healing and a lot of "that's not how they did it last time." I was like 2 weeks out when they took out the bar last time. this time, i was maybe 3 days out.