Category: Everyday Life

Motivating to shower

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Motivating to showerWhen you start to think it’s easier to endure “swamp ass” than take a shower, there’s clearly a problem. This was my problem and to be honest, I sometimes still find myself trading cleanliness for convenience. I do have a few motivating tricks to encourage myself to get into the shower even when I feel like it’s this big annoying chore.

When I was younger I would shower every morning, no matter what. Even though dirt had replaced the grout in our shower, once the water was on it was immediate relaxation and warmth. I never wanted to get out. Thankfully I started to turn on the metal wall heater on before I got in so I wouldn’t have to freeze when I got out. Overall, showering was a great feeling — and still is.

But as time progressed showering got more difficult for me. The place I was living in had a bathtub and lifting my legs over the sides of the tub got really difficult. Had I known about it at the time I would have gotten one of those tub cuts. But I was renting, so the best I thought I could do was grab bars. When my dad was out visiting I put him to work and he installed grab bars and an industrial strength shower curtain rod that was literally bolted into the walls. Then I could grab onto it for balance even while I was standing in the shower. (DO NOT DO THIS WITH A REGULAR SHOWER CURTAIN ROD!!!)

This solution lasted for pretty much until I started using a wheelchair, but I was already having difficulty even wanting to shower because it seemed like so much work. Despite the fact that I actually liked being in the shower and how it made me feel afterwards, showering every day turned into showering every other day.

Showering once I was using a wheelchair turned into another experience all together. Getting undressed took longer, transferring onto the shower chair took longer, transferring back took longer, getting dressed again took longer. It just got to be such a pain. Showering every other day turned into showering every three days.

Then I started traveling for tennis and wasn’t staying in places that always had an accessible bathroom. So I discovered baby wipes and could actually go for a week without showering. Really. Eventually I got to the point where I would have to start to feel extremely uncomfortable in order to force myself to shower. I mean sweaty ass, itchy skin, grossness in too many places. Sometimes this would take three days but other times it would take a week. It shouldn’t have taken this amount of mental and physical torture to get me into the shower.

So I made it a goal to shower more often, deciding that every other day was an acceptable goal. Eventually some psychological tricks came into play and if one of them didn’t work then I would try another one. It seems to have helped me create a more shower-filled pattern so I wanted to share them.

Make it easy.
If you take a step back and look at your showering situation, is it as easy as it could be? Is your shower chair easy to transfer to? Is the shower head maneuverable or always pointed properly at you so that you don’t have to mess with it? Do you have grab bars in places you need them? Making the process as easy as possible is going to make it easier to convince yourself to do it.

Imagine how you’ll feel after the shower.
Whether you haven’t showered in a week or you just showered yesterday, a shower adds an almost instant mental boost. You feel clean, you feel some energy. You might feel more relaxed. If I am having trouble motivating I put myself into the future and think about how it will feel to be done. This usually makes me feel even more dirty than I felt prior to imagining it and gets me in the shower.

Make plans with people.
The times when I wasn’t showering very often I wasn’t necessarily around other people often enough to feel self conscious that I might smell gross. But I noticed a pattern that when I would make plans with people to go to dinner or a movie or something that involved being in close proximity, I was more likely to want to get in the shower.

Reward yourself.
On occasion I have found it effective to tell myself, “Okay if you get in the shower right now you can  go eat ice cream. It sounds childish and silly but it has worked on occasion.

Make it comfortable.
I have started using my phone’s music player and external speaker to take music with me into the bathroom. It’s now part of my routine. I also like to make sure I have some good smelling soap or body gel. The most important thing to me is a good shower head. I have a two-headed shower head that actually ends up showering me in more places at the same time. It’s great.

You might be able to come up with some of your own motivators as well as the above. I have a really good success rate now with getting myself in the shower. I feel better, happier, and of course cleaner.

My dead arm

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My cousin Joe has labeled my right arm my “dead arm.” When he first said it several years ago, his mom, my aunt, didn’t think this was very nice. I didn’t care. He was eight years old and that’s exactly what he saw — my dead arm. He’s pointed it out several times, teased me about it, and is not intimidated by my dead arm.

The fact of the matter is that it’s not really dead. I just can’t lift it very high on its own. I use my left arm to help lift my right arm when I need to drink from a cup or eat or lift something. The arm just appears dead because it doesn’t appear to do all that much by itself.

But it does.

My dead arm can type. I am typing this right now with my dead arm. It can write. It can hold a cello bow and with help can make music. My dead arm can grip a tennis racket, and with momentum from my wheelchair side-arm a tennis ball to a 90% first serve percentage.  It can grasp onto anything. It can shake your hand. Most importantly, it can steer my wheelchair using the joystick.

As my cousin has gotten older, it’s more fun to tease him back about it. Over the summer I finally had an opportunity to say “Hey my dead arm might not be able to lift a drink by itself but if I use my other arm to help it, this dead arm can smack you upside the head!”

Lucky for him he didn’t wait around for a demonstration.

There’s more than one way to win

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In grade school we used to play a game called “Steal the Bacon” in gym class. It involved splitting into two teams, assigning each kid a number, and sending the teams to opposite ends of each side of the basketball court.

The teacher would put an eraser, or the “bacon” in the middle of the court. At random, she’d call out 1 or 2 numbers and the kids with the called numbers from each team would run out to the middle of the court.  The object was to grab the bacon and run back to your team’s end line without getting tagged by your opponents. Any of the called numbers could steal the bacon and if you made it back, your team got a point.  However if you got tagged, the other team got the point.

I hated this game. Hated it badly. I was a slow runner so I would either ALWAYS get tagged or NEVER catch the other person. I hated it.

That was until I figured out how to win in a different way.

Even though I was a slow runner I was usually just fast enough to get out there so that the “face-off” would still happen. This was the moment where you are both circling the bacon, waiting for the most opportune time to steal it. Most kids wanted to steal the bacon — myself included. But here’s where I changed my strategy.

I never tried to steal it.

Since you could get a point by tagging the stealer, I set my sights on tagging the other person the MOMENT they grabbed the bacon. So I would hover over the other person, just waiting for them to try to steal it. Eventually they would make the mistake of going for it and my hand was there to tag them immediately. It didn’t work every time but it worked most of the time.

I went from never winning to winning about 75% of the time just by changing my strategy.

This is true for many things in life. By changing the way you look at something or changing your definition of success you can often change a losing proposition to a winning one.

So whether it’s a physical chore like getting up from a chair or your job or a course that you’re having difficulty with — take a moment to look at the problem differently. How else can you win? Can you redefine what it means to win by changing your goals?

Remember, you don’t always have to steal the bacon.


Use a camera bag to hold your wallet, cell, & more

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One of the first questions I had when I started using a wheelchair was “What the hell am I supposed to do with my wallet?”

I tried putting it in the front pocket of my pants, but that was uncomfortable and difficult to access. I tried putting it in the pocket of my wheelchair but I felt like it could easily fall out unnoticed. Then I had to also deal with a cell phone and it required a better solution anyway.

Thats when I tried a small camera bag — specifically the Lowepro Ridge 60. I know you can attach various bags and what-not to your wheelchair but I really didn’t want to have to dig underneath or behind every time I needed something.

So I picked up the camera bag after seeing it at a store and thought it might work. It was a great decision. I have had the same one for almost five years now and was recently looking to replace it with a new one — maybe a different one. But I decided that there was nothing about it that I didn’t like so I re-upped with a fresh version of the same model.

I love it for several reasons:

  1. It’s small enough not to get in the way but big enough to notice if you drop it.
  2. It holds a lot. I can get my wallet, phone, and either iPod or camera in there plus change, receipts, etc.
  3. It has two extra pockets — one small one that zips and one larger one that velcros shut.
  4. It’s inexpensive at around $12.
  5. It travels well — great for planes since you can keep it on your lap at takeoff.
  6. You can quickly throw change & receipts in it after checking out at the store.
  7. It fits nicely on your lap when used in conjunction with the leg strap I use.

The only negative is the occasional teasing by friends and family about my “purse” or “manbag” but the easy comeback is to say, “Well where the hell would YOU put all this crap if you were in a wheelchair?!?” They usually can’t come up with an answer. Then I say, “Well I can think of a place you can put it!”

If you’re struggling for a solution to how to deal with all the “stuff” when riding around in a wheelchair, I highly recommend the Lowepro Ridge 60 or any other small camera bag that you can find to use.

When kids ask questions about my disability

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Kids can ask embarrassing questions. Having muscular dystrophy you start to get the questions about the same time you start to walk funny. I find it happens most often in the grocery store when the kids are strapped in cart with nothing better to do than look, point, and say, “Mommy, why does he get to use that car to go around the store?!?”

Naturally the mom is usually really embarrassed but personally I take no offense when a kid asks a question about something that is new or different to them. It’s natural. They don’t know the answer. Often the parents don’t even know the answers. It’s uncharted territory.

I am never offended, put off, or angry when a kid (or even an adult) asks me questions about my disability or muscular dystrophy. If you do get offended, get over it. You’re going to have to deal with it for a long time so you might as well educate people instead of make it seem like everyone with a disability has a chip on their shoulder.

Whenever a kid asks me a question about my disability, I take it to be a teachable moment for both the kids and the parents and it’s very easy to do and here’s how.

1. Smile.
This is so important because it puts everyone at ease and shows immediately that you are not offended by the question.

2. Put your answer in terms the kid will understand.
I usually just say, “Well my legs don’t work the right way so I have to use these wheels to get around instead of walking.”  Most of the time I don’t even get a follow-up question but sometimes you get a really inquisitive kid who just wants to know everything. Fortunately the parent usually tells the kid they have to go and the conversation ends there.

3. If the parent apologizes tell them it’s not a big deal.
This is the teachable moment for the parent. I think curiosity in kids is a great way for them to keep learning. I’d hate for the interaction to be an opportunity for the parent to inadvertently teach the kid it’s not okay to ask questions, when it is.

After a while of dealing with the questions you eventually get your stock answers. There are times when someone will ask something I’ve never been asked before but those times are much more rare now. So have fun answering the questions now that you now how!