Mito Awareness Week: So You Wanna Get a Shower Well, first, you only get one shower per week, because your port cant be accessed when youre wet. A week before your next shower day, work out your weekly plan for changing med patches and your ostomy bag, so that as much falls on the shower night as possible, since those things dont hold up well. Four hours before your shower, wash your hands, glove up, and de-access your port. Ready? Okay. First, set everything up so that when youre out of the shower, you can change your ostomy bag: anti-fungal powder, adhesive powder, box of sticky barrier wipes, and putty-like ring go on the rollator beside your bed. Put down a towel, a pile of wash cloths, and get the new bag out. Cut the hole in the new water. Next, you have to waterproof all your tape: put large (4x5 inch) pieces of impermeable tape over both of your medication patches, since you dont have to change either today, and hope like crazy that no water makes it under the actual patches. Reinforce your insulin pump site. If it hasnt been at least four hours since youve de-accessed, or if you dont have a good scab, cover your port site with more impermeable tape. In the shower, youll feel like you still have your socks on from all the tape and the tube and the ostomy. Check seventeen separate times to make sure youve actually removed your real clothes cause itll still feel like youre wearing SOMEthing. Youll want to soak up every last possible second, since this is your one shot for the week, but pay attention, because your blood will pool in your feet, turning them deep purple, and youll struggle to breathe the whole time. Pop your head out of the curtain every ten or fifteen seconds. Be careful not to pass out--remember that one time? Yeah, none of that. Wash up, but be really careful around the tape. All five or six hunks of it, and keep it mind that the tape moves all the time (patches, pump sites are constantly rotating) so you have to be aware of where it is. Normally, your tube wont be a big deal, but every so often, youll feel like someones gotten a pair of pliers to pinch and twist a little bit of skin. It doesnt happen very often, but when it does, well, itll teach you to be ready for it all the time. Now that your face is bright red and your feet are deep purple and you can no longer breathe, be careful as you hop out of the shower because youre dizzy from not breathing well for six or seven minutes. Yup, thats all you get, once a week. Post-shower, make sure youre really dry. So, remember that surgery and the nasty infection that followed, leaving a gaping wound where your belly button was that had to be packed for three months? Your belly button isnt really a belly button anymore, and it wont dry out on its own. Yeah, weird, but mito never claimed to be normal. Make sure your tube site is dry, and put a fabric pad around it. Tape the top of the pad to your skin with tape that youre actually allergic to--if you dont tape it, your bra will make it hurt. Once your bra is on, wrap a piece of gauze on the bottom edge so your tube doesnt leak on it, and tape that in places. Change your ostomy bag; Ill spare you the details, but its a multi-step process. Remember the waterproofing you did on your patches? The edges will have come up. Water permeates even the impermeable. Cut the loose edges, then put layers of specialized tape over the waterproof stuff, cause even the tiniest loose edges WILL get pulled up. Then, youll have lost a patch, and when you do that, you may NOT put a new one on, but the old one wont work, but you can NOT go without one. Its an impossible situation, and no one has any solution. Check your feet for any open places, blisters, or things that arent healing well. Dont forget to reconnect your insulin pump, or you wont be alive in the morning. Check your blood sugar and take the appropriate amount of insulin to bring it down from being disconnected. Wrestle your compression tank top on, the one that holds in all the hardware, so it doesnt feel like its just hanging out there. Apply nerve-dulling lotion liberally, and then a little bit of something smell-good over top, because the stuff that works also stinks. Besides, you wont get another chance at a shower until next week... Congratulations if youve done this in less than 90 minutes! Your face will be bright red for hours because your body cant regulate in heat. Throw your hoodie on the bed and crash into your favorite chair, thinking that youll put it on after youve rested a bit. Youre exhausted and ready for bed but too tired to get out of your chair, cause the bedtime routine is another 90 minutes... insulin pump site change, setting up tube feeds, mixing and giving meds... at least tonight your port isnt accessed, so you dont have IV fluids to worry about. Thats quite the consolation.
Posted on: Tue, 16 Sep 2014 02:28:35 +0000
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