Welcome to TP. justjen. My experience will not, I fear, bring you much comfort. Dementia and a stoma, in combination, are, I believe, as bad as it gets. I am very sorry to say that, in my view, you cannot stop somebody, with these conditions, from removing the bag. The only way I have found to deal with it, is by constant checking. Quite often, naturally enough, this is resisted and the cause of much aggression and agitation. So, by trial and error, one has to try and find a way of doing it with the minimum of fuss. As with most things in the dementia world, what works today won’t work tomorrow. Keeps you on your toes! To minimise the inevitable ‘accidents’, I found pull-ups to be a great help. It’s a rotten problem as I well know. It’s distressing for the sufferer as well, they don’t understand what the bag is and it’s only natural, I suppose, to try and clear things up. The bags end up all over the place, sometimes out of the window, down the loo, in the sock draw. Some disposals only come to light when the smell leads one by the nose.
The strain of all this is considerable because it’s a 24/7 job and there’s never a let up. Being no spring chicken, it brought me to my knees and I’m ashamed to say I finally had to admit defeat and move my wife into a Care Home.
Visiting daily I find I can deal with it quite happily through the day because I know I will not be faced with it during the night as well.