The old Poo & wee story.

Ok...strange title but its a strange subject.
As you probably have gathered, I am a nurse. A nurse who (at this point in life) tends to work multiple 12hr night shifts.
On shift, i tend to have a lot of different tasks to get through like medicine rounds, dressings, paperwork, stocking up, checking supplies in, pad rounds and other bits & bobs to go with it all.
We tend to also do 2 hrly rounds in the place that i work - mainly to check that people are OK or to turn them if they need to be turned in bed (to make sure they don't get sore etc..). We also do pad rounds.
Now...when i say 'we' i mean 'we' as in myself and the Care assistant/s who is on duty that night.
And when i say 'pad round' I mean that we change (elderly) peoples pads which they wear if they are incontinent of faeces or Urine (poo & wee to you).

No....wrong kind of poo.  Idiot.


What got me thinking and pondering, is WHY is having a wee or poo SO important to us as human beings?!
I know it's a strange question, but its really a massive factor that is possibly more obvious when you work with elderly people. You see, it feels at times that some folk spend their night worrying and planning out when they NEED a wee, CAN they have a wee, will someone be there to HELP get them on a bed pan/toilet/commode, will their pad be dry or not etc...

Its such a massive issue and incorporates loads of different things such as the embarrassment of getting a stranger to help them with a really intimate task and their 'private parts', the persons struggle to sometimes come to terms with their independence and needing help from people, and their own comfort etc...I start to understand it.

But I appreciate its a big issue and not one I can do it justice in my little blog post, and I still feel that I'm left with a sense that toileting, bladder and bowel issues are something that are deep rooted in the human makeup and can really drive us and frustrate us at times - especially when you have to rely on others to help you with something that you have spent the majority of your life just getting to grips with - lets face it, some times you spend your first 5 or so years learning how to deal with it!

In my job (I mean my workplace - sorry to use the word 'job' in this post) its a funny issue because its sometimes a bit of an unspoken one but it actually is a major player of growing old.

Wee and poo are usually the stuff of jokes and humorous tales, so its a challenge to deal with them as part of caring for people. I only hope I keep my sense of humour as i grow old but still carry on caring with dignity for people who need it. This is basic care, and not one that is (or should be) left up to the care assistant to do - not that carer do a bad job but its not just them who have to get their hands dirty. To really be a good nurse actually means that we have to get in there and do the tasks that some people make out to be beneath them.

In the meantime, i'll do my bit for dealing with the shit of life...and also poo & wee.