Using the Shower

The Gimp and his Gizmos – D

While able bodied folks can stand in the shower, showering when disabled is more of a challenge. First of all, moving your body through a stream of water is not a real option. It is much better to install a head on a hose and move the water over your body. Placing the hose in a holder at  body level makes accessing the stream simpler.

Equally important is the ability to put stream down in a way where it is both off of the body and not spraying into the room. This allows you to get your body wet and than free up a hand to soap up. The the water can be picked up for a rinse.

In theory, the chair can be placed close enough to the controls to allow a gimp to reach over and either turn the water on and off or raise and lower the temperature. In practice there is no way to access that end of the shower in our current bathroom. This means that the controls are several feet from where I am sitting.

This shows the seat I use for taking a shower together with the bar and the hose hung on it. The use of a toilet seat allows me to wash the my nether regions. The two handles allow me to balance well as well as to transfer to and from the chair.

After considering several options we found a tool for turning on and off lawn sprinklers with valves in the ground (see below). It solves the problem for the able bodied turned 90 degrees with the distance being vertical rather then horizontal. The detail shows one of the handles (for turning on the water) with the tool in the process of turning the other handle.

 

Sitting in my chair I reach out with the tool and hook it over one of two handles on the shower control. The outer handle controls whether the water is on or not. The inner one controls the temperature.

 

 

I put the stream where it is pointed into the shower and away from me. Then I turn on the water and wait, occasionally feeling the stream with my hand until it is warm. I then reach over and adjust the temperature. Always, the water is first used on the parts of my body which have feeling and only later on the insensitive portions.

 

 

With these tools, I am able , once I am seated in the chair, to turn on the shower, adjust it, turn it off and reach for a towel. The tool  is even long enough to reach a selector valve which diverts water from the shower head into the hose. Fortunately, that action involves pushing the valve since with that tool I lack the ability to pull.

It is amazing how much independence a few simple tools can give us.