I now envy people who can jump and swim in the river, in the pools, in the ocean, in some Lagoons, blue bayous, or even flood waters because for me even using our own toilet seems to be like a journey in Mt. Everest as I use it to clean my ugly body.
Bathing or showering for that matter is one of the activity that I loved doing before, well I love bathing up to now only if I have less pain,but if I have some (intense)pain especially on my back and feet, the experience is scary. But before I am bathing everytime I feel upset or toxic due to inadequate dialysis I was getting before, or if I just sweated a lot and wanted to be more comfortable before I go to sleep just to help me sleep.
Nobody can't argue that showering really relives stress and tension because it alters your body heat momentarily so that you can feel much better especially if you are feeling warm or hot due to the heat because the relatively cool water refreshes.
When our bathroom/toilet was renovated I made it to get installed with an exhaust fan. The effect was really nice, now I would take a bath and it feels like taking a bath/shower outside which adds to the refreshing effect of showering particularly if the weather is hot because at that point the water from the tap will be relatively cooler.
I do love it because I could not bathe anymore from the water of our artesian well because its water now had been smelly due to its shallow water source below ground as it only has about six meters of pipe going down and due to the fact that it is about as old as our house dating back from 1983.
The water from an artesian well is cold during hot days and warmer in cold days. I missed the days that I bathed/showered using its water beside our house and when we got older I fetched water from it so I could take a bath inside our bathroom where it has not tap water source.
Now at least the cool fresh air outside rushes inside the bathroom because of the installed exhaust fan and it is nice to take a bath that way then having to endure build-up of steam from my own body when I take a bath before because it makes me have more difficulty in my breathing.
So now currently I just have to time my bathroom use if I would like to use the toilet and then after that I would have to shower. So if I would have a diarrhea it means that I would have to take a bath everytime I would use the toilet. It is just me and a force of habit or maybe an OCD.
But bathing now is not as easy as it sounds really because of my difficulty in breathing particularly near my dialysis days where I am already waterlogged and my breathing is just difficult to do. Then everytime I would scrub my head I would just have to pause a bit to make way for my heart and breath.
It is just good that I am making use of a scrubbing glove where it is better than a cloth to really clean my body. After shampooing I would bend over to wash out the shampoo over my head. Bending over allows me to breathe more easier while waiting for the shampoo to get washed off.
Then I would proceed to soap my ears before straightening my body up to wash them because they are always oily. Then I would proceed to wash my face, neck and nape including the back of thee ears using my scrubbing glove with soap scrubbed unto it. I will rinse it and then proceed to scrubbing my both arms with rest in between just to catch my breath.
Then I would try to scrub the back of my shoulders which is one of the difficult things to do. Then after that I would scrub my back, my chest area until down below and then the front and back of my legs, the buttocks and all that. After that I would then rinse off and then apply soap on my rinsed scrubbing gloves and then I would sit in the plastic chair that my mother had put inside the bathroom which I use for me to wash my legs and feet.
I am rinsing off with the bum washer and not the shower itself because it has more pressure. At that point I am all through with the exhausting scrubbing portion of my bathing activity and now at a leisure of rinsing my body and sometimes I would point the bum washer up to let me shower with the water.
After that part I would wash my bum last time with soap and water while standing up. Then I would make sure that both my hands are gripping the towel bar and the organizer above the toilet so that I could guide myself and carefully walk towards the door to dry myself up. I will not be walking but will just twist my feet because I could not walk normally due to pain which is apparent when I did not take a pain reliever prior.
After putting the towel on I would open the door where my mother would hear the door opening and would call my father so that he could support my body trying to sit in the wheelchair. At that point they would lower me down from the front of the bathroom which was raised up on renovation. Then I will be wheeled to my room where I would sit on my bed, lay down and put on my clothes.
