Sunday Stroke Survival: Time to Flip the Wardrobe

With the cooler days and nights, it's time to flip the wardrobe. Gone are the easy days of T-shirts and shorts which comprises the bulk of my dressing options for these north Georgia foothills. They are exchanged for sweaters, sweatshirts, and long pants.

This year in thinking of this change, I'm facing a new complication. Adult diapers, more exactly changing them. It's more complicated than with shorts which slide off and on easily over my AFO and shoes. With long pants, it mean taking off my shoes, sliding my pants off, changing my pull up, and repeating the process in reverse before leaving the bathroom. I'm basically getting halfway undressed and redressing every time I do this. The few times I've done this in the spring and summer months showed me it's going to be a long, hard winter. Sure you can rip the sides to get out of them easy enough to do with two functioning hands, but more difficult with only one. It still doesn't alleviate having to undress to put on the clean one.

I've been researching patterns to make durable options like I did with the pads.  Unlike the pads where I could trace the disposable pad I liked the best, full "panties" are different and I'd need a pattern that don't come cheap.  Then comes the problem of size. While regular underwear patterns patterns go by waist size, while my normal waist size is is spot on a size 7, there are extra seam allowances for the snapping portions. several small elastic placements at the waist to hold up a wet diaper. It's not like sewing regular panties because of the absorbent padding makes for extra bulk. It'll take a lot of elastic work to accomplish.

 Sewing elastic onto fabric with two functioning hands is easy. I've just got to figure out a way to do it with one hand. It may be as simple as using a dozen pins the maintain the stretch while sewing and a loop at the back of the sewing machine to hold the fabric straight while sewing or a  lot more complicated. I honestly haven't tried to do anything but flat, straight stitches yet.

I've already know how to attach the snaps through trial and errors in making my own pads. So that won't be a problem. That was a challenge and a half when I was trying to figure out how to do it.

Currently, I'm roughly going through a case of disposable diapers in a month. That's 54 of them to the tune of $22.50. That's about 12 per week. At $0.41 a piece, it's a decent price, but I'm trying for the ease of changing them without having to undress and redress each time. The cost difference will eventually save me money in the long run. The same was true for the chucks pads I use to protect the mattress or even the pads. Yes, I could buy these ready made, but they are cost prohibitive or it would take longer to reach a break even point.

But then on the other hand rethinking this, I'd go through acrobatic feats of wonder trying to do up all the snaps or Velcro with each change. It's a no win scenario for 6 months out of a year all to keep from undressing during the cold parts of fall and winter. I guess I grin and literally bare it, quite literally, until I get my somewhat bladder control back. Sigh!  This too is living post stroke.

Nothing is impossible.