Feb 4, 2007

Gary tried out the raised toilet seat today for bowel program. So far it’s hard to imagine he’s going to find it preferable. It took fifty minutes to get through the bowel program while sitting on the seat, whereas lately doing it in bed takes about thirty. He found it hard to be in that position so long – having to lean over to one side all the time in order that fingers reach the proper aperture. I stayed with him to make sure he didn’t lose his balance, especially on the weight shifts, though he thinks he’ll soon be at the point where I wouldn’t need to. He does need to work on technique. He has to regularly change to a new pair of rubber gloves, and a couple overenthusiastic snaps of the gloves he was taking off led to instances of flying poop (in my direction, unfortunately; I told him if he hit me with it, I was outta there). After he was finished, Gary noted it’d taken him until 11am to have breakfast and go the bathroom. He noted that at least it wasn’t like our experience at the Transitional Living Apartment, where it’d taken us what seemed like the entire day to get through his morning routine. We’d worried it was always going to be like that! Hopefully the time it takes him to get through this will get shorter too. But, who knows. He still sticks to bed baths except for the once a week shower, due to how long the shower takes.