Shower

There were fun times in my therapy, I had to make them happen to keep myself sane. My therapists made an easy target because I worked with them everyday and we built up quite a rapport . I’d been on the main floor about a week, my catheter had been taken out and I was getting used to the wheelchair. I was beginning to get comfortable, maybe a little too comfortable with my situation and I was beginning to smell. You’d think that that would be the least of my problems but you’d be wrong. One weekend while waiting for breakfast to be distributed I was wheeling myself down the hall looking for the linen closet. When at last I found it I quickly grabbed some towels and took them back to my room. Then I waited until rounds had been done, breakfast trays had been collected and the nurses had settled into their morning routine. Then I close my door, collected my towels and wheeled myself into the bathroom.

I’d spent the day before checking out the shower, how it worked and how the bench fold ed down from the wall. The only thing left was to get myself maneuvered from the wheelchair onto the shower bench. Never for a moment did I think of removing the side of my wheelchair to make things easier, instead I locked the chair down and lifted myself onto the edge of the bench and then maneuvered, with only one hand working, I got myself onto the middle of the bench. When the water was just right I began my wonderful shower, maybe the best shower of my adult life and soaped myself well. With that one hand I got every part I could reach and then some. Then I took the time to dry myself and then I was stuck. With only one side of my body working and that side towards the inside corner of the shower stall I really had to figure my way out and without tipping over. But somehow I managed to get back into my wheelchair and I felt so good for having accomplish the task of getting myself clean. The next day the nurse asked me if I wanted to have a shower and I though why not and promptly got into trouble. This time I couldn’t stop myself from tipping over onto my bad side and almost fell off the bench and to the floor. I was shocked into realizing how precarious my state was and now I was very leery of taking a shower at all.

A few day later it was posted on my wall that I’d be learning the next day how to get into the shower stall and could finally take a shower but I’d be accompanied by a therapist. Somehow the idea of being “accompanied” by a twenty-four old therapist didn’t sound attractive in the least. My therapist was a lovely girl I’d come to rely on to help me with my exercises and we’d gotten close. So dressed she showed me how to pull up the side of my wheelchair and how best to maneuver myself to the bench. I practiced two or three time til I had the thing down pat and then we were ready for my shower. It wasn’t the way I’d envisioned at all but boy was it intimate; I had to strip bare ass naked under her too watchful gaze and get myself situated and she pointed out what I was doing right and wrong. She was so concerned that I’d topple over and she didn’t want that to happen to me. I was grateful but I was resentful too that I had to have her watch me while I took my shower like a child but hey, when you’re in the condition I was in you take all the help you can get.

But..., but I was determined to get back at her somehow and I got my chance when my friend Lorri came to take me home from the hospital. She had to go through training with me so she’d know the right way to handle me, to learn what I knew but had a tendency to forget. So when Lorri show up I introduced her to my therapist as the girl who watched me shower! And then I sat back and laughed as my therapist blushed and explained the how’s and wherefore before Lorri told her she was a nurse too and had seen so many bare assess that she couldn’t count. It was almost as good as the shower.

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My friend Traci