Toilet Hygiene

I'm going to share one of the worst, if not the worst, thing about being this obese - dealing with toilet hygiene. Or rather, the common lack thereof. The mechanics are that I just can't reach to wipe myself. Either fore or aft.

I have a sponge on a stick that I use for wiping aft. Or rather, that my husband uses to wipe me. He is very laid back about it all, but it hurts and embarrasses me to have to have him take care of something so intimate and frankly, disgusting. When he is not at home, I can contort myself just enough to use it. One hand on the tub rim, the other holding the stick. I dig under my huge apron, brace my arm on the toilet rim and squirm a bit. It's not nearly as neat and hygienic as when hubby does it as I have to bring the dirty sponge forward past my fore and belly. There is no "front to back" wiping except when hubby does it.

When I am out of the house, I simply have to do without wiping. We call it having "poopy butt." I can't use the sponge myself since there isn't a tub rim to brace myself on. And family unisex bathrooms are rare. Even if I could use the sponge alone while out, where would I rinse it? At home, I use the tub. I couldn't bear to rinse my sponge at a common bathroom sink and I'm not about to put the sponge in a Ziploc to rinse hours later. Ugh.

I simply do without fore wipes. I don't want to use the sponge that wipes my aft to wipe my fore. So, I wear absorbent cotton underwear when I'm out and sit on a sheet on the couch at home. Only after a shower do I ever feel clean and my underwear is too awful to discuss. I've have a few urinary tract infections in the last couple of years and I get painfully raw at times.

Why am I sharing something so intimate and private? Because sometimes I get the impression that people think that we morbidly obese people are unmotivated to lose weight. That we LIKE being this heavy and eating "all we want." This is the ugly side of living with super morbid obesity. It's not pretty and it's not fun and it's no way to live.