This post is devoted entirely to trying to use the bathroom in a wheelchair. Now in supposedly public bathrooms, they have those nice big handicapped bathrooms, right? WRONG....... First you have to find them. Signs showing where they are were mounted at eye level for standing adults. When you are in a wheelchair your line of vision is several feet lower. I had never noticed that before and I found it a pain when in the chair. And not all bathrooms are considered handicapped accessible.
Next.....getting into said bathroom. Negotiating the doors....which if you are lucky push in. But then you encounter this ridge at the doorway. Now you have to get yourself over that ridge with the door shutting onto your feet. Can we say ouch?
Ok, you finally get yourself over the ridge and are now in the bathroom. Off to find the handicapped stall. Ever notice how bathrooms don't just go straight in but instead you go through a series of turns to get to the stall area? Yeah - easy to do with feet but hard to do in a wheelchair. So you finally make it to the stall area. Ok now you look for the handicapp stall. Of course it isn't up front nice and close but it's the last one at the end of the whole bathroom.
You finally reach the handicap stall. Then you encounter another problem - the door opens out. Now if you are in a wheelchair how the haydees do you open the door? You are in front of the door and you can't swing it to you as you are in the way. Just learning how to open the danged door took 30 minutes.
Now the door is open and I head into the stall. To a non-handicap person that stall is huge. To one in a wheelchair it is impossible to get the wheelchair into the bathroom along with you and close the door behind you. I swear you have to be a pretzel to accomplish the ways they make you twist to do things. Not easy to do. I found most bathroom doors won't close with the chair in front of the toilet but there isn't enough room to negotiate any other direction. So now I am on display. Thank goodness it's the last stall. Maybe there is a reason they put them at the end after all.
Ok, you have now transferred your rear to the toilet seat. You can't reach the toilet seat covers - they are placed way too high to reach. You can't reach those nice handicapped railings - they are too far from the toilet and the wheelchair is in the way. I made the mistake of unlocking the brakes and pushing the wheelchair back once. Last time I made that mistake. I couldn't get it back and hopping back to it didn't feel good.
Now we are going about our business and we need toilet paper. Problem......huge problem! You are sitting on an elevated seat. The toilet paper holder is huge and points downward. To reach underneath and capture the paper means you fall off the toilet seat. I learned to get it while in the chair and hope I had enough for what I needed cuz that was all I was going to get.
Next you need to get out of said stall. Remember that pretzel twist? Yeah ya gotta do it again only this time you are going out backward. Going forward is hard enough but backward is ....yeah....no words for it that are appropiate here.
Ok....out of the stall and now it's time to wash your hands. You look around. There are no sinks low enough to wash your hands or allow the elevated legs on a wheelchair to go underneath. So you try the pretzel again....nope. You can't even activate the motion sensor. Your fingertips don't even reach in that far. I learned to invest in Lysol wipes. They are my friend. Learn to carry a mirror to see yourself or to make repairs to either your hair or makeup. Bathroom mirrors are not your friend. You will be lucky to see anything but the ceiling in them.
Now you have to get out. Do you think one person in that bathroom would help? Nope - never had that happen......not even once. I felt contagious. Remember now that door opens in. I would usually wait for someone to come in because opening it and going out never worked well on my own.
Home bathrooms. Yeah the wheelchair doesn't even come close to entering that. So I hop in on the leg in the knee brace using the walls to bounce my shoulders off of so I don't fall. Washing hands there is easier if you call standing on one leg balancing easy. Again - Lysol to the rescue.
Lesson learned: carry Lysol wipes and scope out where the bathrooms are located and how far away they are so you can determine how long it will take you to get there and get in before you pee your pants. In the meantime, invest in depends for those times when you just can't get there in time. And if you take a water pill allow 4 hours prior to leaving the bathroom area. By the way, my first bathroom trip outside my hotel room took me an hour between getting in the door and getting out the door let alone the time it took me to find the bathroom.
Next - people's reactions to you.
