Have you turned it off and on?

Bathing. Should be a simple task, right? After all, being able to maintain our basic personal cleanliness/hygiene is something that should be possible, regardless of what physical limitations an individual has. And yet, when you throw in physical disabilities, manual handling challenges and a recent surgery something as simple as giving your child a bath and hair wash becomes a task akin to organising an expedition.

When our boy was little, bathing him was as easy as bathing any other child, the only additional support needed was, literally, additional support. As a child with exceptionally low muscle tone, he is unable to sit independently and so a bath seat with full support for his body and head has always been essential. As he grew, he also outgrew our normal bath and thus, a fancy bath that goes up and down was duly installed. Coupled with ceiling track hoists, this has given the Dude the ability to enjoy the simply luxury of having a warm relaxing bath that so many of us can take for granted.

I cannot emphasise enough just how amazing this piece of equipment has been over the 6 years that we have had it.

Initially, when funding adaptation works our Council refused to fund anything other than a shower on health and safety grounds. It took months of pressure from the Dude's neurology team to get them to understand that water falling on his head actually triggers seizures for him and so a bath, fully supervised and supported, was actually not only safe but preferred. The warmth of the water helps relax muscles that a tight and sore as a result of the multiple daily seizures and abnormal movements he experiences and coupled with his supportive bath seat there are few things my boy enjoys more. While this fantastic bath has enabled us to bathe our boy with comfort and dignity, as with all pieces of equipment it can occasionally go wrong. And when it does, chaos ensues.

Something most people don’t think about is just how much more complicated a simple breakdown is when you are dealing with special needs equipment. If a standard bath develops a leak, you call a plumber. If our special needs bath stops working (currently it is stuck, in the up position, the top edge about 130cm from the floor), we firstly have to get a young adult safely out of it! Then we turn it off and on. If that doesn’t work we then call the company who supplied it, pay a call out charge before they will book it in, then wait up to a week for an engineer to be able to come out to sort out its electrics. In that time, we are unable to bathe our teenage son. Please send help. And deodorant.