MITCH  STURGEON
Author and Blogger Living With MS

Excerpt #2

From Chapter 41 – It’s Always the Bathroom

When it came to bowel control, I rocked. On this five-night visit, I only had to go twice. The toilet in my room had no accessibility features, so Kim and I scouted out some of the public bathrooms to find the one that worked best. Besides looking for a higher toilet, grab bars, and a spacious stall, we also wanted to find a less busy bathroom. This way, Kim could come in and assist me without being exposed to things she didn’t want to see.

We found the best location we could, and the process went well. However, things didn’t go as smoothly the second time, a couple of days later, at the other end of the resort. Instead of using the same toilet, I suggested we try a similar one much closer. With Kim’s help, I transferred to the toilet. But when it came time for the more difficult upward transfer (the toilet sat lower than my wheelchair), this stall design differed enough from the other one that we couldn’t figure out a way for Kim to help me transfer. We needed one more body.

I’m not self-conscious in these circumstances, so I asked Kim to walk out into the general area and find “the first Jamaican dude you see.” The resort’s male employees were plentiful, clearly identified by their clothing, and always willing to help. This girl, who had no problem pole dancing in public a year earlier, frowned at my suggestion. She considered it distasteful to approach a total stranger and ask him to accompany her into the men’s room. I’ll never figure her out.

When Kim didn’t return in a couple of minutes, I surmised that she had set out to find my brother, not some Jamaican dude. Indeed, she hiked across the entire complex and found Tom lounging at the pool nearest our hotel rooms. Of course, he accepted the mission. 

In my boredom, I contemplated alternative ways to gain leverage with my arms and transfer myself. It was a long shot.

After I had analyzed the problem—possibly solving simultaneous differential equations in my head, possibly not—I contorted my body into a precise configuration to optimize the applied forces. In doing so, I accomplished by myself what Kim and I could not accomplish together. I give credit to what remained of my once keen engineering mind. Or it may have just been shit luck. At the moment when Tom and Kim burst into the bathroom to rescue me from the swirling abyss, they found me sitting in my wheelchair and zipping up my shorts with a smug look on my face.