to pee or not to pee...
Jan. 22nd, 2013 02:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ysobelOne of these days I will shut up about bodily functions.
That day is not today.
*grin*
Nothing graphic in this post, btw, just talk of. Well. Pee.
As a followup to this post re overnight incontinence ... well, actually, first, let me back up a bit.
Getting into bed for the night (and, as a result, getting *out* of bed) is somewhat extensive. It is not as simple as "get into bed". I mean, okay, getting into bed is fairly straightforward, with the lift system, but getting settled down for the night? Is a matter of:
a) making sure I am positioned Just So on the bed, to minimize discomfort, especially because I can't change anything once my person leaves;
b) in particular making sure the pillows under my legs are right, because otherwise my knees will kill me;
c) placing pillows under both arms (because while they are pretty much fused by bone, it's not actually comfortable to let them dangle unsupported, which is also why I have a pillow under my neck), making sure that they are positioned in the appropriate places to give support without blocking my view of my hands, because of touchscreen reasons;
d) hanging my phone up to charge, placed so that it is within reach but won't actually fall out of reach while I sleep;
e) getting my fan remote in case I wake up too hot and need to cool down (fan is sometimes overkill but I can't manipulate the blankets myself), and because it neither has something to hang it with like my phone nor any sort of tether, it is in a (old) hip/fanny pack that rests on my lower stomach while I sleep, sort of bracketed by the arm pillows;
f) getting my iPad, partly so that I can do winding-down activities like reading ebooks or watching netflix or listening to an audiobook or something before I go to sleep, partly so that if I wake up with one of those weird "it's 3am and there's no reason to be awake but I am wide awake and sleep is not in sight" things I have something to do aside from stare at the ceiling;
g) having earbuds, which, because I can't put them in myself, have to be put in when I go to bed and stay in all night (excepting when they fall out, which they do annoyingly often, but I haven't come up with a better solution yet), for things like netflixing and audiobooksing and musicing and whatever;
h) having a telescoping scratchy stick clipped to the hip pack mentioned in e so that I can scratch my face when it itches and also do minimal amounts of sheet management;
and i) ensuring that there are no wrinkles, lumps, bits of kitty litter, or other things that might make for discomfort.
This process is fairly streamlined with the aides that have been with me a while, but it is still a Process.
Getting up is a bit less fiddly, but there are still all the things to take away -- hip pack, phone, scratchy stick, arm pillows, iPad, earbuds -- before actually getting me out of bed.
This is relevant to the other post because it makes getting up to pee in the middle of the night ridiculously awkward.
Even under the best circumstances -- which involves the person helping me be my roommate rather than an aide who has to drive here, and also involves my bladder behaving between me waking up and me actually getting on the toilet -- overnight toileting is not a trivial process. There is the time to get me out of bed, the time *and* physical effort to get me on the toilet, ditto for getting me back off, and the time to get me back in bed afterwards. And between the time involved and the effort, I am thoroughly awake by the time everything's complete, so it is a horrible disruption of my sleep pattern.
...plus there's the fact that my bladder is rarely that cooperative, and by the time the need-to-pee signals have gotten me awake enough to start the whole thing, I would probably end up peeing the bed anyway.
And the fact that I hate inconveniencing other people, especially when it involves waking someone else up so that I can pee.
Which is part of why I am secretly glad that the incontinence issues make it not really practical to do overnight toiletings.
#
Someone on my last post (hi stars!) suggested dry247.com, and I checked them out and then ordered a sample (two briefs for $10) and tried them over the weekend. They are advertised as being useful for overnight dryness -- and while I was skeptical, it turns out they actually work pretty well. I don't end up *feeling* wet, and it doesn't leak through to the sheets. (Neither of which is the case with my current briefs.)
And yet I find myself balking at the cost.
My normal briefs are $18 for a 24-pack, which works out to 75 cents each. These? Are $48 for 18 (2.67 each) or $125 for 72 (1.74 each), which is not ridiculous given that a) things take money to produce, and b) they are actually effective (and c) they do save laundry cost).
It's not as stupid as, say, prescription costs in the US.
And I know that having the security of, well, not having to worry about peeing in bed, has a significant psychological savings as well. (Plus, I could do drastic things like have a cup of chamomile tea before bed -- right now I daren't drink more than a mouthful or two for at least an hour and a half before last toileting -- which simultaneously feels rebellious, because it's deliberately invoking overnight pee, and ridiculously normal because most people don't have to do that sort of thing.
But I still ... I don't know. I'm reluctant to get them, partly because that sort of means 'admitting' that this problem isn't going to go away (in scare quotes because I've pretty much done so on here, but somehow online is not the same as in person) and that I'm a horrible immoral failure (not really but it feels that way), partly out of this ridiculous belief that if I tried harder I wouldn't need to waste money this way...
idk.
That day is not today.
*grin*
Nothing graphic in this post, btw, just talk of. Well. Pee.
As a followup to this post re overnight incontinence ... well, actually, first, let me back up a bit.
Getting into bed for the night (and, as a result, getting *out* of bed) is somewhat extensive. It is not as simple as "get into bed". I mean, okay, getting into bed is fairly straightforward, with the lift system, but getting settled down for the night? Is a matter of:
a) making sure I am positioned Just So on the bed, to minimize discomfort, especially because I can't change anything once my person leaves;
b) in particular making sure the pillows under my legs are right, because otherwise my knees will kill me;
c) placing pillows under both arms (because while they are pretty much fused by bone, it's not actually comfortable to let them dangle unsupported, which is also why I have a pillow under my neck), making sure that they are positioned in the appropriate places to give support without blocking my view of my hands, because of touchscreen reasons;
d) hanging my phone up to charge, placed so that it is within reach but won't actually fall out of reach while I sleep;
e) getting my fan remote in case I wake up too hot and need to cool down (fan is sometimes overkill but I can't manipulate the blankets myself), and because it neither has something to hang it with like my phone nor any sort of tether, it is in a (old) hip/fanny pack that rests on my lower stomach while I sleep, sort of bracketed by the arm pillows;
f) getting my iPad, partly so that I can do winding-down activities like reading ebooks or watching netflix or listening to an audiobook or something before I go to sleep, partly so that if I wake up with one of those weird "it's 3am and there's no reason to be awake but I am wide awake and sleep is not in sight" things I have something to do aside from stare at the ceiling;
g) having earbuds, which, because I can't put them in myself, have to be put in when I go to bed and stay in all night (excepting when they fall out, which they do annoyingly often, but I haven't come up with a better solution yet), for things like netflixing and audiobooksing and musicing and whatever;
h) having a telescoping scratchy stick clipped to the hip pack mentioned in e so that I can scratch my face when it itches and also do minimal amounts of sheet management;
and i) ensuring that there are no wrinkles, lumps, bits of kitty litter, or other things that might make for discomfort.
This process is fairly streamlined with the aides that have been with me a while, but it is still a Process.
Getting up is a bit less fiddly, but there are still all the things to take away -- hip pack, phone, scratchy stick, arm pillows, iPad, earbuds -- before actually getting me out of bed.
This is relevant to the other post because it makes getting up to pee in the middle of the night ridiculously awkward.
Even under the best circumstances -- which involves the person helping me be my roommate rather than an aide who has to drive here, and also involves my bladder behaving between me waking up and me actually getting on the toilet -- overnight toileting is not a trivial process. There is the time to get me out of bed, the time *and* physical effort to get me on the toilet, ditto for getting me back off, and the time to get me back in bed afterwards. And between the time involved and the effort, I am thoroughly awake by the time everything's complete, so it is a horrible disruption of my sleep pattern.
...plus there's the fact that my bladder is rarely that cooperative, and by the time the need-to-pee signals have gotten me awake enough to start the whole thing, I would probably end up peeing the bed anyway.
And the fact that I hate inconveniencing other people, especially when it involves waking someone else up so that I can pee.
Which is part of why I am secretly glad that the incontinence issues make it not really practical to do overnight toiletings.
#
Someone on my last post (hi stars!) suggested dry247.com, and I checked them out and then ordered a sample (two briefs for $10) and tried them over the weekend. They are advertised as being useful for overnight dryness -- and while I was skeptical, it turns out they actually work pretty well. I don't end up *feeling* wet, and it doesn't leak through to the sheets. (Neither of which is the case with my current briefs.)
And yet I find myself balking at the cost.
My normal briefs are $18 for a 24-pack, which works out to 75 cents each. These? Are $48 for 18 (2.67 each) or $125 for 72 (1.74 each), which is not ridiculous given that a) things take money to produce, and b) they are actually effective (and c) they do save laundry cost).
It's not as stupid as, say, prescription costs in the US.
And I know that having the security of, well, not having to worry about peeing in bed, has a significant psychological savings as well. (Plus, I could do drastic things like have a cup of chamomile tea before bed -- right now I daren't drink more than a mouthful or two for at least an hour and a half before last toileting -- which simultaneously feels rebellious, because it's deliberately invoking overnight pee, and ridiculously normal because most people don't have to do that sort of thing.
But I still ... I don't know. I'm reluctant to get them, partly because that sort of means 'admitting' that this problem isn't going to go away (in scare quotes because I've pretty much done so on here, but somehow online is not the same as in person) and that I'm a horrible immoral failure (not really but it feels that way), partly out of this ridiculous belief that if I tried harder I wouldn't need to waste money this way...
idk.
no subject
Date: 2013-01-23 03:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-23 03:37 am (UTC)I feel a bit aggravated that things like this that are necessary to basic living arne't covered by insurance/medicare, though!
no subject
Date: 2013-01-23 07:35 am (UTC)