Category: Health

Motivating to shower

youshouldgoanyway

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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.

Water is important

youshouldgoanyway
Fountain in Wellington, NZ

I recently had a bout with kidney stones. After it was all said and done my doctor said they were calcium stones and that it’s likely I developed them because my bones were shedding calcium and I was not drinking enough water. This is a reality for anyone who starts using a wheelchair but particularly for someone with muscular dystrophy. The bones just don’t need to support as much muscle (or weight) as they used to, so they give up the calcium.

Drink water!

Over the last few years I was definitely not drinking enough water. I was drinking coffee and tea — not to tremendous extent — but it would have been better for me to drink water instead. I know for sure I was not drinking 8 cups a day.

Since my kidney stone procedure (a long other story) I have finally figured out some ways to get myself to drink more water.

1. Drink through a straw.
For whatever reason my brain subconsciously must think that lifting a glass to my mouth is torturous. It is difficult, but really not an excuse to avoid drinking water. However I noticed that whenever I get a soda or iced coffee, I can suck down the entire drink much faster than if I was sipping from a cup.

2. Get a hydration pack.
I remembered seeing those helmets at sporting events with the cans and the long tubes attached to it and wondered if there was something a more refined — and there was. Hydration packs come in a variety of sizes and have a long tube you can keep sucking water out of. The only pain is that you have to clean this out a bit more thoroughly than a cup, but it can go with you anywhere. If you use a wheelchair you sort of have to jerry rig it to your chair but it can be a good way to stay hydrated.

3. Get a water cooler and put it somewhere you pass all the time.
Many years ago I had one of these right next to my desk and it was so easy to just reach over and fill it up. Mine had a cold and hot water button and although the 5 gallon tank was too much for me to lift, for $20 a month it was a great solution. You can even buy your own tank and then have the water delivered from a local water delivery company.

4. Keep track of how much you’re drinking.
I mentally try to add up all my water intake for the day. It becomes disappointing when I don’t get up to 64 oz. I actually aim for 80 so when I don’t even reach 64 it makes me run to the sink for one last water binge. Before I kept track of this I really had no idea how little I was probably drinking. There are days even when I keep track that it might be 5pm and I’ve only had 24 oz. of liquid — not good. But my body doesn’t scream for water like it does for food, so it’s important to stay on top of it.

5. Mix it up.
You can get sick of plain water really quickly. I have several different types of powdered mixes like Crystal Light that let me switch it up. There are boxes of single-serving mixes that you can get so you can carry them with you too. I also will allow myself to drink juice and even throw in a soda every now and then. You don’t have to give it up altogether.

If you drink enough water you can definitely keep kidney stones at bay. There are also many side benefits to drinking lots of water — losing weight for example, among other things. So do your best to stay hydrated — especially if you have muscular dytrophy.

How wheelchair tennis improved my function

youshouldgoanyway

I started playing wheelchair tennis in 2006 after seeing a photo of the amazing Nick Taylor playing in an electric wheelchair. I had no idea you could play competitive wheelchair sports in a power chair. I started playing tennis again, albeit from a chair now, and it changed my life.

When I first started playing, I had a hard time holding onto the racket when striking the ball. I couldn’t hit very far, or hard. I had trouble leaning over to pick up the tennis balls off the ground without pushing up off my knees to sit back up straight.

But after playing for several months, all of this changed. My body optimized itself and somehow everything got much easier. The biggest improvement came in my trunk muscles. I became able to lean over and pick up tennis balls easily and pop right back up to sitting up straight. This improvement translated to many other things like being able to roll over in bed more easily. Even when I am cleaning up my house or doing laundry I know that my trunk muscles are working better because of tennis.

I don’t know the exact reason this happened. There might have been some strength improvement but I think it’s more likely that a bunch of muscles I wasn’t really using decided to kick it into gear and help out. I think this is something it’s easy to forget about. Even if an individual muscle has weakness, your body can learn a new way to function such that other surrounding muscles help out. If you start adding muscles together to complete a task, it’s a lot more effective than just relying on one muscle.

This is why I encourage wheelchair sports and exercise to other people with Becker muscular dystrophy.  You can even play wheelchair tennis if you are still walking but have difficulty — you just use the chair to compete. You don’t have to overdo it to see improved function. You just have to do something long enough to allow your body to optimize itself and eventually make life easier.