Bathroom humor is part of growing older. You don’t need to have dementia to experience irregularities and incontinence issues creep into your life as a result of a  health and fitness issues. There is no shame in it but often people laugh about it or else they would cry.  I believe it helps deal with the frustrations of such a condition.

It is typically a topic I avoid in my blogs as it is not a big issue at our home and it quite frankly is one that makes me a bit fearful.  I am able to manage so much of my mother’s new behaviors as a result of her dementia, but many a person who have lived through my experiences have told me that was their turning point.  When their loved one began to exhibit profound issues around incontinence, it took them to a level of care they could not tolerate or manage at home. I don’t want that day to come.

So, for want of a better term, I am a bit pee and poop paranoid and tend to get anxious if we have any episodes. I am always waiting for it to become a thing! So I found myself in such a state very early in the morning a few days ago. Someone woke up and on their way to the bathroom and stepped in a puddle of pee. I quickly jumped into action with bleach, paper towels, latex gloves and followed the trail back to my mother’s bedroom.

I had to turn on the light in my mother’s room and it woke mom, who understandably wanted to know what was going on. Irritated, and unsuccessfully trying not to show it, I told her to put a pillow over her eyes because I needed the light on to clean up a mess. “What mess?” she asked in an uninterested tone, lying there with a pillow over the top half of her face. “There is pee all over the floor and I need to clean it up”, I answered with more than a bit of exasperation. Clearly her anxiety level about the situation was not rising to level of mine.

Mom remained very matter of fact as she lay there contemplating the situation and asked, ” How did it get there?” Missing my opportunity to be a kind and dutiful daughter I fell into the trap of shaming and said, “Well Mom, obviously it is in your bedroom and it is all over the floor leading to the bathroom so it must have been you.” Mom thought about that for a minute and then replied into her pillow, to no one in particular, “I wonder why I was on the floor?”

Nevermind…..