Caregiving: Not for the Weak of Heart or Stomach

Everything was hunky dory taking care of Nana. She can still feed herself, swallow her pills. It’s easy to dress her in bed. I have pill boxes for both my grandparents that I fill every Sunday so we are good for the whole week. I can get them coffee and oatmeal for breakfast and still make it in time to start work by 9am. Life is great. Until one night!

Nana hadn’t pooped in a few days. Our hospice nurse told us to push her Senna tablets on her and to also give her a suppository to get her to go. Nana has always struggled with being regular. We start this regime which caused the world’s largest blow out of all time. We had just finished dinner and I was relaxing on the couch watching TV with my family. Waiting on my sister to come over and help me change Nana and put her to bed.

Paw-Paw walks over to my side of the house with a horrible look on his face. I ask him what Is wrong and he says “Well, Nana isn’t constipated anymore.” I get up and walk over to their room with him. The second I reach their bedroom door I knew I would be walking into world war three. The stench alone was enough to cause your stomach to do flip flops. This was the most massive blow out I have ever seen in my life! Think of the worst diaper blow out your kid has ever done and then multiple that times 10, nah 100! I tell Paw-Paw and Nana not to worry. That it isn’t a big deal and that we will have Nana cleaned up soon.

My sister arrives shortly and I delicately tell her what we are about to be put up against this evening. The second she walks into the room she is immediately gagging due to the stench. It smells like a small animal crawled up inside Nana and died. Poop is everywhere, EVERYWHERE! This level of cleanup is above my skill set so I lean on my sister for direction. She tells me to go and grab a trash bag. I then put a chuck on the floor for my sister to put all the dirty wipes so we can easily wrap it up and place it in the trash bag. We glove up. We are going in, there is no turning back now!

My sister is leading this cleanup effort. I am her back up and garbage bag holder. Paw-Paw happily stands over my shoulder letting me and my sister do all the work.   We get Nana rolled over and the cleanup begins. My poor sister is quietly gagging over the smell, all the time telling Nana not to worry, that it’s ok. Paw-Paw bravely looks over my shoulder and sees the mess and makes a disgusted look on his face which sends me and my sister into a fit of laughter.

We work quickly to get Nana cleaned up. My sister starts thinking about our mom. She tells us there is No way our Mom would have cleaned Nana up like this. I started laughing because it’s true. Maybe she would have but I’m not so sure. I leave the room to take the trash bag out. I mouth to my dad who is in the living room that Nana had a massive poop. He looks at me and just starts chuckling. I shoot him a look and then start laughing too. I am sure he is thinking here are my two spoiled rotten daughters, whom have never ever had to lift a finger their whole life, cleaning up their Nana.

I come back into the room and we finish cleaning Nana up. We put her on a new clean gown and she looks at us so relieved. We take the rest of the mess out of the room and then spray some Lysol to help remove some of the smell. We put the oxygen on her and kiss her goodnight. Paw-Paw gives us a big hug and kiss as well.

Therefore, I say caregiving is not for the weak of heart and in some situations stomach. I tell this story not to demean my Nana or take away some of her dignity. I tell it because this is the reality of a lot of caregivers. While there is a lot of joy, love and happy times that comes with being a caregiver it’s not all sunshine and butterflies either. There is a lot of heartache and tons of messy situations. We chose to get through it with lots of laughter because it beats the alternative of crying!

Are you a caregiver? We would love to hear about your worst clean up story and how you made it through it. Leave your story in the comments below! We’d love to hear from you!