It was happening again. I was wet, and I needed to have my clothes – my pants and my shirt – taken off.
This time, I was being changed. It was the afternoon – not the evening, when I was in bed and when I have been sometimes getting wet lately. Also, curiously enough, I’ve recently got a superapubic catheter, which means my urine now comes out of my belly, but my urine is sometimes coming out of my penis. (I need to find out why this happens and if it can be remedied, but I love not having, for the first time since my spinal surgery five years ago, a tube in my penis, having my penis back.)
This meant I had to be transferred from my wheelchair to my bed, have my clothes taken off, be cleaned, have other clothes put on me and be transferred back into my wheelchair. Not only did I have to stop what I was doing, it was a major inconvenience for me and my attendant, a procedure made up of several procedures that took a good part of an hour.
It’s hard for me not to feel like a baby when this happens. Especially when my piss-soaked clothes are being pulled off me and when my penis and crotch and butt are being cleaned. And all the more when my attendant asks about putting a diaper on me “just in case.”
This isn’t the only time that diapers have come up. Last year, when we were discussing possible alternatives to an internal catheter, my urologist suggested – advised – that I wear diapers. As if I stayed in bed, except for when I went to his office, and didn’t mind having my attendants constantly change my diapers. As if I didn’t mind going to meetings, concerts, other outings into the community reeking of urine. Talk about feeling like a baby! Hell no, this wasn’t an option!
And this isn’t the only time when I now feel like a baby. It often happens when I’m getting undressed, or dressed for that matter, with my attendant having to turn and manipulate my body. I don’t feel it so much when my attendants have to feed me or turn the light on, open the door, etc, for me. I do feel it sometimes when my attendants have to take my shit out of my ass, and it goes without saying that I really like a baby on the thankfully very rare occasions when my shit comes out on its own by accident.
For many, many years before my surgery, I worked very hard to be seen and respected and taken seriously as an adult and, even more so, to see and respect and take myself seriously as an adult despite needing assistance with many things. It was all too easy to feel like a child, to fall back into that mode. Now that I need so much more help, including after wetting and shitting myself, it’s all the harder not to feel like not only a child but a baby.
