How to Choose a Bed Bag

You know, I never would have imagined in my wildest dreams (or shall I say nightmares) that I would at any point in my life become a connoisseur of indwelling catheter bed bags. But I am. And I can tell you that Bard bed bags SUCK. I will hook his catheter up to a ziploc bag before I use one of those again. Why? Let me count the ways.

See that side entry green thingy? Bard Bed Bag - THEY SUCKThat's the spigot that you use to open and close it so you can drain the urine. Well, it is damn near impossible to open/close it one-handed, which is what one must do because one must be holding the urinal into which the urine drains with one hand. So best case scenario, I end up with urine splashed on the floor and on me in small to medium amounts. But I've been a quad-wife and mom for so long that I don't even care about that. But what I do care about is that the tubing part that connects to the actual catheter is slippery perfect smooth. That means when I put it onto the catheter, it tends to fall off. Kendall bags have a bumpy surface where it connects so that the tubing has something to grab onto and doesn't fall off. 

With that as a backdrop ..... 

One afternoon, I went into the bedroom to give Chad his mid morning meds. For whatever reason, I pulled back the sheet. Oh yeah, I remember now, his stoma has been looking a little funky, so I was checking on it. As I was pulling back the sheet, I glanced down at the bed bag out of habit. The bag was empty. After 12 hours. That can only mean one thing, and one thing only. He is sitting in all of the pee he execreted the previous 12 hours. And urine is very caustic to skin, and his skin is paper thin, particularly on his rump, so I was terrified to see what was in store when I rolled him over to start cleaning him up. Thankfully, he didn't have any skin sores, and even more luckily, I had put down both a big fat sheepskin under him and a heavy duty waterproof bed pad under that, so the urine had not soaked through to the sheet and mattress pads (one waterproof, one regular).

Normally I don't put him on a bed pad, but he has been spasming alot lately because we're trying to down tritate on his baclofen dose, and the increased spasms cause him to wiggle down and around the bed, or twist up sideways. The sheepskin is too stretchy to be an effective draw sheet, so I have been putting pads down under the sheepskin just so I can stand over him in the bed, lean down and hoist his body one way or another, up/down/left/right or some combination thereof. Yes, that scene could be straight out of a porn movie if only it wasn't of a paralyzed man being manhandled by his beleagured tired wife.

I took the sheepskin and bed pad off, tossed them in the hallway and cleaned up every single square inch going from Wheeler's belly button to his knees. I used a water rinse first, then Cetaphil - a heavy application that I gently swabbed off with a moist towel. Then I rinsed him off in water completely again. It took longer than it sounds it would. If I leave even a tiny trace of urine on him anywhere (and conveniently, you can't tell urine from the water when cleaning him), he would potentially get a truly horrendous sore on his skin. As a result, I am verrrrrry careful and thorough when he has urine on him. 

I got him all cleaned up, went to the hallway to pick up the wet sheepskin and bed pad only to find Dogette having sex with them. It was utterly shameless - she was rolling in them, over and over and over and over again, just soaking in the scent as much as possible. She would bury her face and nose in the soiled sheepskin and pads, nuzzle hard into the ground, roll over and over, then start again. She was in dog heaven. She's a dog's dog I tell ya. Dogette is a a filthy, disgusting, rolling in pee dog. Needless to say, I sent her outside straightaway (I might have seen her smoking out there?). 

The moral of the story: don't ever buy Bard Bed Bags.