Shower Part 2


If you haven't read Shower Part 1 , May 21st, please read that one first...


Anyway a lot has happened since the last post and I will write about that later, but for now I will finish the shower story...


So I finally get her past the dogs, the cookies and milk and back to the bathroom. While I wait for her to finish her snack, I remember that the shower chair is downstairs in her bathroom so I treck back down to fetch it.  And I get it set up...


And then I give her a shower, Thankfully it was pretty uneventful.

When she gets out of the shower she needs three very important things: 1. Her inhaler - breathing is a good thing! 2. Crisco - she cleanses her face with it. A nurse in the hospital once thought someone had put the wrong birthdate on her chart because she looks so young. A dermatoligist once told her to use it...it seems to be working. The third very important thing she needs is pure glycerine. She coats it all over her body. It's the stuff they put in lotion to make it lotion. You can also make bombs with it so nowadays you can only buy the small jars of it, not the quart sized ones that she used to get.


Then I blow dry her hair (after applying Big Fat Sexy Hair mousse, cause you never know who you'll run into ;) Then I curl her hair.

Hot rollers always look like you should be able to tune into radio stations or something...

Then, after she is fed, scrubbed, oxygenated, greased and slathered I let her sit on the front porch to wait for the UPS guy with one of my favorite companions.


It's been a busy day, I need to go do something very important...

Sit and spend some time with these two...

Yay! We got travel approval to go to China! We will be leaving sometime around the 10th of June and coming home around the 24th. I'm so excited I'm about to bust...How am I going to be able to last three weeks? The adoption agency sent the official papers and while I anxiously waited for the UPS guy (with my camera in hand) I decided to give Mama a shower. Do you have any idea what it takes to do that? Let me fill you in...(don't worry, I'll keep it G rated)....

First, we have to pick out clothes. These will be too warm, these will be too cool, these... are dirty...

So we agree on a sweatshirt and basic black pants. Then I have to get her upstairs to the shower. I can do it downstairs, but she wanted to hang out upstairs anyway so...I have to move the oxygen converter to the other side of the room so after she gets upstairs, her cord will reach, so she can breathe...breathing is good :)

Then I have to help her stand with her walker to get over the doorjamb then help her sit in the wheelchair again.

Then I have to push her uphill through wet grass, I forgot that the sprinklers had just run. Don't they make 4 wheel drive wheel chairs?? Why not??? I wish I had a picture of me in semi-platform clogs losing traction and trying not to tumble back down the hill. It would have been a Jack and Jill moment. Finally...we made it. By this time she is laughing and saying, "Do you need some help?"

I haven't had a workout like that in years, so I pretend that I am relishing the moment and pick a magnolia blossom and give it to her...she appreciated that...

Then we talk about the daylillies...Then she points to something and asks, "What's that?" I reply, "It's a leaf."

Then we talk about the mailbox that someone, who was coming around the corner way too fast, plowed over and obliterated...

Then I go make sure the garage door is open and oops! she's rolling away!!!

Just kidding :) I had her brakes on...

By this time I've got my breath back and we travel to the garage to go in the house. Did you know that a very small bump between the driveway and the garage can make a wheelchair pop a wheelie?? I didn't either...

Getting through security is pretty tough around here...

Then I have to get her to stand again, hold onto the rail and very carefully let me help hoist her up three stairs. But before I make her stand I have gone into the kitchen and gotten a chair so she can sit as soon as she gets up the stairs while I pick up the wheelchair and with the precision of a surgeon bring it up the stairs and into the house. I say precision because the house wasn't built wheelchair friendly and almost doesn't fit through the door.

As we pass through the kitchen she decides she wants a cookie and of course if you give granny a cookie....she wants milk to go with it...

I'll have to finish tomorrow, I am unable to post more photos and I have a child who needs me...It's great to be needed   :)