January 2018

You Forgot What?

Today’s blog post is for all the paralyzed readers out there or anyone who needs special equipment to go the bathroom. Whether you’re new to paralysis, or an old veteran, we’ve all had to consider what would happen if we left needed care supplies behind. After my seventeenth year anniversary in the chair I had my first real big whoopsy and it didn’t turn out at all like it should have.

Anyone who’s done a stint in rehab has gone through the dreaded worst case scenario talk. You know, the one where your therapist says ”If by any chance, you forget your catheter at home, you need to know what to do.’

Well no kidding right! We assume that we know what to do. With a thirty year veteran nurse for a mother and being a former licensed nurses assistant myself, I know I did.

Over the years I’ve attended a few of these classes. Everyone’s answer is always the same, go to the emergency room, right? Seems totally logical. But that’s not what we learn in those classes. We learned that hospitals are only for emergencies and if you happen to leave your cathing supplies behind that you need to call your local medical supply company. There you should be able to pick up what you need. To all those rehab therapists out there offering this advice, I’d like to call bull.

When traveling home from Kentucky I happen to accidentally leave my big backpack full of cathing supplies at our winter home. It was something we didn’t realize until we were at least five hours out and about eleven hours from home.

So what did I do? Well, first I had a little heart attack and then my friend and I jumped online, finding the closest medical supply store. With a thirty foot gooseneck horse trailer we navigated through Lord knows where West Virginia in traffic and finally found a place. A place that didn’t carry catheters and didn’t know anywhere else that did. From their parking lot we called around to a bunch of other places with no luck. In a last ditch effort I called a local rehab hospital thinking that they would know of a local medical supply store that would carry what I needed. Surprisingly they did not. Thankfully, they were kind enough to invite me to their facility and give me a catheter avoiding an ER trip. Never second-guess the kindness of nurses.

Wheeling out of the rehab center clutching my new catheter kit so tight that you would swear was full of hundred dollar bills, we went down the local CVS and found the rest of what I needed for the trip. The entire ordeal took between one and two hours before we were able to get back on the road.

What did I learn from this little fiasco?

You can’t just call a medical supply store and find what you need. After calling around to 10+ places I still came up short. I was in a larger town in West Virginia too, one that should have had at least one type of catheter for sale, but it didn’t, and no one at those stores knew enough to provide assistance. It’s not like there’s a directory of places in each state selling these things, though maybe there should be, and it’s not like the information is easy to find without actually calling. If straight cathing is your only method of going to the bathroom then this is a huge problem. Leaving your supplies behind happens, so what should you do if you can’t depend on medical stores like naïve therapists seem to think?
I plan to stash a catheter in my truck somewhere. I can get everything else anywhere else but a catheter is a necessity. If I have at least that in my glove box, I’m good.

What if you don’t have that? Well, you should try the local medical supply stores first. Should that fail, I suggest doing just what I did. Call the closest local rehabilitation hospital and fall at the feet of their nurses. They’ll find a way to help if they can. And of course, if you happen to be experiencing any type of autonomic dysreflexia, just go to the local hospital emergency room. Don’t pass go and don’t collect $200.