“I’ll be able to frolic in the bathroom with no barriers”. Read Jonny’s latest column – A Different Light as published in the Northern Advocate’s 48 hours publication Saturday 5th December 2015.
It’s December, it’s getting hot. Stinking hot? I hope not.
It’s been 40 months since I smashed my shoulder; twenty months since I had it operated on.
Since then I have been granted a housing modification from ACC and the Ministry of Health – an unusual partnership.
It’s to open up the bathroom. To liberate the shower from a cubicle into a free-for-all wet-area.
Yay, a universal design accommodating everyone. Including me, for now and into my decrepit years. I’ll be able to frolic in the bathroom with no barriers – a hideous vision I know (Squeaky clean maybe, but there’s no free lunch).
As usual, with anticipation, one needs to go through the hard yards to reap the rewards. In this case, the hard yards mean going without a bathroom for at least 2 weeks as the builders have completely gutted it back to its bare bones.
As I write this, I am day one into the project and thinking of my options. Go without washing for 2 weeks, I’m not really the sweaty type; I should be able to get away with it? Yeah,right! Outside with a hose? I don’t think the neighbours would be that impressed. I have one hell of a big bath a hundred metres away from the front gate, the Pacific Ocean. That’s sounding better.
I’ve been meaning to reacquaint myself with the beach. It’s been a long winter, however after 13 days I could end up feeling and probably looking like a salted cod or with the fuel spill at Marsden Point a sardine in oil!
There’s Karawai Lodge down the road, they have a communal ablution block (when I think of communing with the owner Des, I do however grimace). He said the shared bathroom is a downside for the lodge. I think it could be a special feature. Think Hundertwasser. Think Japanese baths, they’re very ‘now’, but not helpful for my current predicament.
I think of my Dad – his ablutions intrigued me when I was young. He lived through WW2, and he was drafted into the Army for 2 years. He knew all about the classic “stand-up” wash; lathering with soap and water and then wiping off with a towel. Brutal but hey, job done. I could always use friends’ or families’ bathrooms but in the morning I just can’t see it. I already get up at 5am and even then I seem to run behind schedule!
I shouldn’t complain, not really. For many disabled people having appropriate bathrooms and toilets is problematic, particularly when moving out of the usual habitat. I once advocated for a woman who was a wheelchair user and was having to wash herself from a bucket for over a year and a half.
I went to meet a colleague last week who was up here from Wellington – another wheelchair user, who had booked an accessible room, only to find that the vanity was inches away from the toilet. It wasn’t going to work. It wasn’t accessible and he wasn’t there when I arrived. He’d checked into another hotel that was actually accessible.
Sometimes we don’t realise what conveniences we have until we don’t have them. Sometimes we put up with dire inconveniences for long periods of time. Sometimes we don’t put up with inconvenience at all. Sometimes inconvenience makes us hot under the collar. Stinking hot? I hope not.
Downloadable pdf below:
| Available Downloads | Type | Size |
|---|---|---|
| The inconvenient truth | 203 KB |