5 October 2010

Another geriatric golf day and ride around in the buggy with Griggsy. Still using my gutter from the car to the clubhouse and back, thanks to the ‘hug’ lifts given to me by our splendid  club secretary. Scott. He really is the only one I trust to manoeuvre me over the steps etc However well-meaning my fellow members are they really don’t seem to understand how weak I am. I have one more Tuesday before I go to Thailand and I suspect that by the time I return, in early November. on my next visit to the club will be using a wheelchair. Even today I did not feel totally safe the whole time and realised that my legs were that much weaker, and indeed my arms too which I rely on, to take my weight, leaning on the gutter frame. Fortunately Scott has ordered a ramp to be installed which he says will be there within the next two weeks.

This afternoon the ‘ incontinence lady’, Sue, kindly fitted me, for a home visit, at the end of a very long day. She is a qualified nurse but only part-time and covering a vast area and has a very heavy work load so I felt fortunate that she was good enough to acknowledge there was some urgency over my request for a consultation. I had previously explained to her, over the telephone, that I was travelling by air within a couple of weeks or so and was worried about the lavatory side of things as I would be unable to move about the aircraft and each leg of the journey was at least 8 ½. hours.

She came with a wide range of alternatives devices, some of which were specifically designed for the incontinent, which  is not my particular problem. Nevertheless, we were able to find three or four different things that we felt would satisfy my needs. One of them is a pair of pants with a sort of plastic pouch on the front which in itself holds a certain amount of urine but would not be large enough to contain a whole bladder full. However, the clever thing about that was that it had a spout on the bottom onto which one could attach a bag that would contain up to 2 litres. So, I decided that if I wore my kilt to travel in it would be a simple enough business for the good Doctor Michael to attach a bag on the end of this plastic pouch, that could poke out under the kilt, and then, when it was full, remove it discreetly and empty it in the lavatory.

Sue also produced a marvellously simple little plastic pot with a screw top and no bottom, inside which was a large plastic balloon which, like the leg bag, when pushed out of the pot, would hold around 2 litres. I can see this being very useful on, say, a car journey when one would not want to stop, say at a service station, download the wheelchair and go to a disabled lavatory. This little pot could be discreetly used in the back seat under cover of a towel or rug and, on completion, the top screw back on, safely containing the contents until there was an opportunity to empty it at the end of the journey.

Sue has a number of gadgets which we thought might be useful in the future and I thoroughly recommend anyone with my sort of problems to consult with their own ‘ incontinence lady’ and hope that she is as helpful as was ours. Sue wrote out a prescription there and then for a couple of items that we could collect from Boots and a separate description, which she undertook to send off the following day, for a trial pair of pants which I pray are here in time for my journey to Thailand.