Back surgeries impair any person’s ability to bend their back or even flex it and reduce one’s arms reach. The physical inability to wipe our bottoms offsets our bathroom hygiene and puts our entire health at risk of contracting infections.
Therefore to compensate for the reduced arm reach, you can start by seeking help from a spouse or caregiver. Secondly, a toilet bidet that embraces the idea of a water facet splashing water at your bottoms from within the toilet seat to clean it may be a very innovative and helpful alternative.
And lastly, are the many devices that have been innovated and sold all over to practically compensate our arm reach with their length, commonly known as toilet wiping tool aids. They include the bottom buddy and toilet aid tongs, among many others.
The list of surgeries performed on the back may be very long, from lumbar fusion to kidney transplants and shoulder surgeries. The surgeries may sound very different, but they have one major setback; the inability to flex the back or bend over.
You may be finding it hard to bend over or flex your back after back surgery either because of pain or as a precaution by your doctor to allow for fast healing. You may find it hard to perform many functions that require you to bend over or flex.
You go to the toilet, and after relieving yourself, you find it hard to bend over forward or flex backward to wipe your bottom.
Many people have gone through this kind of challenge from time to time, and it has made their post-surgery life quite complicated, and that may even affect their healing process. Some may even try to force the reach and end up in emergency operating rooms.
There may also be the chances of post-operative medications that may cause people to gain weight. When you gain excess weight, you find it extremely difficult to bend over or flex.
You won’t be able to reach your bottom to wipe it after visiting the toilet. Obesity may be quite a pain in the ass as the pain and inflexibility after a surgery.
We may also need to know how to wipe our bottom concerning the direction we do the wiping. Such knowledge proves very instrumental in avoiding urethral infections and possibly any other poop-to-skin diseases.
Ways to wipe your bottom after back surgery
1. Help from spouse or caregiver
In most cases, almost everyone has a person close enough to them to help, especially during the recovery from back surgery. However, not every relative may be willing to violate your privacy.
It, therefore, may mean that only the likes of spouses, partners, hired or voluntary professional caregivers, and personal doctors may be willing or able to wipe your bottom in case of back surgery.
The idea of messing around with other people’s poop, leave alone ours, maybe both be gross and repelling. That may serve to explain why most people have sought other solutions for the bottom wiping challenge that does not involve somebody else.
It may also help us understand why few professional caregivers may be ready to go all the way, even to wipe other people’s poop.
2. Using the bidet toilet seat
Bidets are a hand-free way of cleaning the bottom and the genitals after relieving yourself.
A bidet toilet seat has a high-pressure water faucet that is fitted or fixed into the inner side of the toilet seat. The faucet has a release button or lever that you operate after using the toilet. The faucet, therefore, sprays water at the nether regions to clean them.
Bidets may not be as popular as other gadgets used to help in wiping bottoms. The bidet may be very helpful to a person who underwent any back surgery and may not be able to reach their bottom.
Some bidet users and manufacturers have even made it possible to spray scented and even warm water.
Additionally, others have the unique feature of warm air dryers. The warm air dryer saves bidet users the shame of walking around with wet patches on the nether regions of their clothing.
Our bottoms and genitalia can be the entry point of infectious disease-causing organisms.
They can be introduced into our bodies by dirty hands coming into contact with the nether regions during wiping after relieving ourselves. Therefore it may be proper to conclude that bidets are conventionally safer and more hygienic than hand wiping.
3. Using wiping aid tools
When you have undergone surgery on the back, be it spine, shoulder, or hip surgery, you may find it hard to turn around and flex. After relieving yourself, an effort to wipe your bottom may prove an uphill task.
The same challenge may be the distance between your furthest reach and your bottoms when you narrow down. Entrepreneurs and manufacturers have, over time, come up with exciting and innovative toilet aids to help people to bridge the gap between their furthest reach and their bottom.
The gadgets and their names may form a long list, yet their function is essentially one; increasing our reach by acting as an extension of our arm. Some wiping aid tools may be electronic, while others are simple tools that follow simple machines’ load, pivot, and effort principles.
We are going to discuss several wiping aid tools.
The long reach comfort wipes aiding tool
This device reaches up to fifteen inches, and it simply wraps six pieces of tissue paper or pre-moistened wipe around the end of the wand using unique nubs to hold it in place. After wiping, you press a button at the side of the wand to disengage the toilet paper and drop it inside the toilet.
Functionally, after fitting the required end of the wand with toilet paper or pre-moistened wipe, you are supposed to pass it down to your bottoms and wipe them when holding at the other side of the wand.
Bottom-buddy toilet tissue wiping aid
Like the previous wiping aid, the bottom buddy has similar features, extending our reach, making it simpler to wipe your bottoms with a limited range of motion. The bottom buddy has jaws on one end that help grab toilet paper or wipes and has a release button on the opposite end.
When using the bottom buddy wiping aid, you pass it down to reach your bottom after having clamped the toilet paper or wipes in the jaws. After wiping yourself clean, you should use the release button at your side of the wand that you hold to release the used toilet paper or wipes inside the toilet.
4. Toilet aid tongs
These tongs provide an additional reach of up to eighteen inches, and it operates just like kitchen tongs. It’s easy to handle, making it preferable and easy to understand for people with cognitive impairment.
It also has a functionally important curved end that allows for an excellent reach into the bottoms. The release of the paper after wiping your bottoms also proves very easy.
However, unlike other wiping aid tools we have mentioned, the toilet aid tongs require a lot of strength as you must maintain a firm grip on the toilet paper or wipe during wiping.
5. Foldable long reach comfort wiper
Like many toilet aid tools, the foldable long reach comfort has the appropriate length for ample reach. This device has jaws to hold tissue paper and wipes and a release button on the opposite side.
The only distinguishing feature of the foldable long-reach comfort wiper is that it has a flexible joint at mid-length. The joint makes it possible to adjust the curvature of the entire length, making it easier to wipe your bottom at whatever angle and more efficiently.
6. Front to the back process of wiping your bottom
It has been deemed proper and more hygienic to wipe your bottom from front to backward.
By saying front to back, you begin to wipe at the space between your genitalia back towards and past the anus.
Some of you may ask why not back to front, but that would put any person at the risk of transferring possible infections to your urethra. The threat of such a possibility of infection is more pronounced in women than in men.
In women, the point of entry into the urethra happens to be closer to the anus than in men. Even so, it may not mean anyone should take their bathroom hygiene lightly.
FAQs
How do you wipe your bum after surgery?
If the surgery does not affect your ability to bend or flex your back, you can wipe your bum as naturally as you used to wipe it before.
But if it does affect bending, you must have to source for a toilet aiding tool that will help you reach your bum like a bottom-buddy toilet aid tool. You can also use a bidet instead.
How do I wipe my bottom if I’m disabled?
If your kind of disability makes it impossible to reach your bottom, you may have two options. First, you may opt to use a bidet that sprays water to your bottom hence cleaning it.
Secondly, you may have to use a toilet aid to enable you to reach your bottom easily.
Conclusion
Back surgery should never at any point make anyone neglect their bathroom hygiene. Even so, it is proper to follow the doctor’s precautions and avoid overstretching to allow for perfect healing.
Therefore, it may be our responsibility to do all we can to strike a balance, even if it means taking advantage of the many innovative yet helpful gadgets and devices.
