Should you visit the ER?

Do you have a fever over 100F? Is the skin around the stoma flushed, and the flushed part getting bigger? Do you need to treat the pain? Has your output stopped (do you have a blockage)? Are you vomiting? If the answer to any of these is yes, then I, personally, would go to the ER. My ER experiences have been that they will treat pain, they may or may not know what to do with a blockage, and a fever and flushing around the stoma could be a sign of infection, so don't wait in that case.

You might try calling your surgeon's on-call number to see if they can give you advice. If you can manage the pain by resting, using appropriate pain killers (as prescribed by your doctor or over the counter), then I would wait if it were me.

I do think that this sort of thing ALWAYS happens on the weekend, or at 5pm on a Friday. I don't think this kind of pain post-surgery is uncommon; I've had it and sort of think of it as your guts settling into the new configuration (I'm on my 4th stoma as a result of my Crohn's Disease). But if there is fever or vomiting. don't wait.

Good luck!