Any suggestions to dampen the sounds of a colostomy bag?

[Rich76]

My brother has terminal rectal cancer, and he has a colostomy bag. He feels humiliated in quiet waiting rooms with other people when his bag starts making fart sounds. I'm trying to find a material to enclose his colostomy bag to dampen the sounds. There's a company that sells neoprene foam inserts to place in front of the colostomy bag, and so I bought a neoprene foam roll, and wrapped a smartphone playing fart sounds but the sound dampening wasn't much, even after I wrapped it a few times.

In addition to neoprene foam, AI has suggested closed cell foam, sound dampening blanket, microfiber cloth, and a few others but I'm beginning to think that nothing is going to be effective given the circumstances. Does anyone have suggestions on what we should try?

Thank you

 

[Tom.G]

I think you essentially want a material with a labyrinth of small air channels/pockets, with a wrap that helps hold it in shape and position.

Maybe a fabric that has a pile an inch or two long, often called fake fur.
If you try a double layer, make the fuzzy sides face away from each other.
Then cover it with a fluffy hand towel if needed.

To avoid sound leakage, you may have to tape any covering to his skin.

Give your brother our regards,
Tom

p.s. Please let us know if you find anything useful, we like to learn too!

 

[Baluncore]

I would start by identifying where and how the sound was being generated. That could lead to minimisation, before attenuating the path taken by the sound that escapes. Is the sound generated by a liquid or a gas flow?

There is normally about 1 psi of internal body pressure, which provides the energy for sound generation, and a valve somewhere, that switches between open and closed with some hysteresis. That switching-valve cycles to generate the high frequency harmonics that sound like a fart. It is a musical instrument. Where is that valve?

 

[berkeman]

Does anyone have suggestions on what we should try?

I did a Google search on dampen the sounds from a colostomy bag and got a number of promising hits. (Your PF thread is #3 on the hit list )

Maybe try that search to see if some of the web page articles and resources are of help. Best wishes.

 

[Laroxe]

A couple of things that might help, the first is diet, if he is aware of any foods that caused gas in the past, avoid them now or he could try a food diary to try and identify anything that makes it better or worse. The other is in considering other bagging systems, there are some that are specifically vented to allow deodorised gas to escape. Ideally he should have access to a specialist nurse, they can be a mine of information.

 

[Rich76]

Thank you all for wonderful responses. I'm going to try everything.