Disposable

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January 4, 2017

It's a holiday week, so the trash pickup won't likely come today, but I don't have a good way to find that out and leaving the trash by the road isn't a problem. We started using the can again, with liner, when she started wearing Depends.

This is my preferred method. I mean, if I have to manage any of her body waste, this is my preference. The bedside toilet we used for the better part of a year was gross, splattery, smelly, and all-in-all an awful way to go from a caregiver's point of view.

Then we moved on to her actually being able to use the toilet. We installed the arm-supports and extra bits so she could get on and off herself, and made sure the toilet paper was in reach when she was using her wheelchair. The motorized wheelchair was a godsend to our routine. Her being able to use her own bathroom and toilet was the best thing that had happened in a long time. But then she started being constipated, which led to her stopping eating, which led to her being too weak and too atrophied to be able to get to the toilet, which led to the mess, frustration, and finally a request that we bring her Depends.

Then a whole new system started, and that's what we're on now. She changes herself, which is time-consuming and frustrating, but she's getting better and more efficient at it and prefers that to needing help. Her strokes left her without the use of her left hand and leg, so it's quite a struggle to manage the whole process. She finds it humiliating. I'm just grateful I don't have to deal with actual waste anymore and can just carry a bag to the outdoor can, and then lift the can into the hatchback, and then that's my whole job.

It's not the cleanest system, and they leak. She makes a mess on her bed, so we have about thirty absorbent pads that she rotates through. We run about four in a load of laundry, and that reveals another part of the "estate care" that is part of the job: her new washing machine is broken. Tomorrow a tech comes, and we hope he can fix it quickly. The washing machine was purchased after she got her chair so that she could wash her own laundry: it and the dryer are front-loading. Now that she's back to being bed-bound, it doesn't matter, except the gross laundry is stacking up.

We took a load of pads to the laundromat and had to wash them twice there. We had about fifteen to get cleaned, and they just didn't work so well as a full load. We hauled them wet back to her house so we didn't have to pay for the drying, too.

Anyway, I hope the trash comes today.



condition , embarrassment , Matriarch , unmentionables