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When have you disregarded what others thought to try new ways for meeting your needs?
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Name: Roger B. Jones
Email: roger@walkandrol.com
Date: 03 Sep 2000
Time: 17:37:15
Remote Name: proxy4-external.rdc1.bc.home.com
When I was still in the rehab, I was determined that I was going to learn to be as independent as possible. At first, I worked long and hard with a physical therapist and an occupational therapist on activities of daily living, like dressing, transfers and pushing a manual wheelchair. I have been known to be a little bit stubborn, so, even though it was quite obvious to others that I wouldn't be able to do it all, my mind was made up. It didn't help that most of my fellow "little quads" were making great progress. Some of them had never even played a sport and I had been a star basketball player in university.
One difficulty I faced was the necessity to empty my leg bag. I never liked the fact that I always had to ask somebody to do it for me. Even though there were lots of nurses and attendants in the building, who were more than willing to help, it still bothered me to be dependent on them. I also knew that I wouldn't have the luxury of around the clock staffing when I moved out into the community. Furthermore, without being able to take care of this bag thing myself, I could never be alone for more than a few hours at a time. It's a good thing that I'm not shy because, on many occasions when I felt like wheeling downtown by myself, I would stop a stranger and ask them to empty the bag for me. I got a lot of strange looks from people, but at least I wasn't stuck in an institution all-day.
Emptying my leg bag became a personal challenge. Every day, sometimes for hours, I would practice bending over and opening the valve on the end of the bag. I scoured disability magazines and medical supply shops, looking for user-friendly openers. Eventually I came up with a system where I could pop the valve open, but it took a lot of time and energy. It worked okay outside, but what about in the washroom?
Most toilet seats are anywhere from two to 3 feet above the floor. Since it isn't practical to have several feet of tubing protruding from your pants, the trick is to lift your leg up to the toilet bowl and either park your foot on the rim or somehow position your leg in such a way that you can open the leg bag valve at the same time -- while making sure that you keep the end of the tubing pointing into the bowl. While you're going through all these contortions, every part of your body reacts by going into spasm, as a sort of protest against the weird positioning. I have managed to spray entire bathrooms during these maneuverings, and I lost track of the number of Nikes that I have deep sixed.
I'm happy to say that I eventually came up with a system where I could empty the bag with some regularity. However, it could still take up to an hour to do on a bad day, and I was never able to do it with all types of pants. A bigger problem was that all my twisting and pulling was consistently pulling off my condom. So, after an hour of hard work resulting in an empty leg bag, I would be wet with urine. This meant getting an attendant to come over to put me in bed to get washed and dressed and back up again. Another hour wasted!
Thank God I finally discovered an electric leg bag emptier!
Copyright © 2000 Roger B. Jones. All Rights Reserved.
Also see these other stories by Roger B. Jones:
My Mis-education
A Breath of Revenge
Student Nurses
Helplessness
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