This is a total gimme. It’s one of the most helpful aids I have, and it’s also one of the most explicit medical devices, so to speak. I’ll get into the subtler stuff as time goes on.

So: my shower chair.

I have touched on the subject of showering in the past, in passing and in detail. Suffice to say it is extremely taxing for me. I usually aim for a shower every 2-3 days, which means I usually end up showering every 3-5 days when I’m in decent health. I try to time it so I shower once on the weekend, to be able to share the shower with my husband — he will help me when I ask him to, but really, I just enjoy sharing that time with him. It’s not really sexual, though I do consider it a form of intimacy. Usually I will also shower once mid-week just so that I don’t get uncomfortably stinky, greasy, etc.

I don’t always sit during my shower. And I almost never sit the whole time; if I need to sit the whole time, I probably shouldn’t be showering. But it is a huge help, especially when I am washing my body. That requires turning, reaching, bending, twisting, lifting, and balancing, all while pushing a soapy little puff around my body. It’s easier to reach my feet and not fall down when I’m sitting on a stool vs. leaning over standing on one leg. Shaving, too, is something I usually do sitting down, as the bending and twisting is too awkward and stressful for my lower back.

I also scrub certain parts of my feet and hand with a pumice stone to get rid of dead skin cells, because those spots (heel, bottom of my big toe, and around the cuticles on both fingers and toes) get very dry otherwise. This results in two things: feeding my bad habit of picking at my cuticles, and painful callouses on the feet. That’s too much force being exerted to also use up my energy standing up. This is actually the part of my shower that takes the longest, but it’s also best to do it during my shower, when my skin is softened from the warmth and moisture.

OTOH, I usually stand while I wash and condition my hair. Not enough water pressure to rinse it out when I’m sitting, and the less time I’m applying force with my arms lifted high, the better.

I actually don’t know what it is that makes a shower such an event for me. I can pick out some aspects: the heat (though I can’t tolerate extreme heat anymore), the humidity, the enclosed space? I find it hard to breathe in that setting; is my asthma the reason? I do know that actually doing anything while I’m standing is difficult for me, which is why I tend to avoid washing our dishes (unfortunately for mattw) and almost entirely why I didn’t last long at the cafe job. But it feels like that’s not all of it. I get so shaky after a shower, and weak, and shaky. And shaky. And I don’t do great after washing the dishes, but it’s usually not anything like that.

But you know, I don’t always get shaky and week after my showers anymore. And before I bought this chair, I did.

The reason I don’t just sit on the edge of the tub is: ew. OK, the real reason is that it’s still a serious balancing act. (And if it’s anywhere other than home: it might let a lot of water out, and also, ew.)

I got my chair from Target; it was the cheapest one I could find that looked safe and like it would fit our tub.  There are any number of sites that sell these things, and a quick hop on the Google bus should get you where you’re going. This one isn’t particularly portable — it folds down, yes, but it’s not like I was going to carry it on the Metro so I could have it at my hotel in DC. But it allows it to be stowed neatly in the bedroom closet, which means mattw doesn’t have to deal with it when he’s showering on his own, either.

I seriously took a good week to write this post. I feel pathetic. I’m going back to filing now.

Oh. P.S.: Sign up at Target’s website for their weekly ads before you order from them, and if they allow you to just sign in with your Amazon account, do it. I don’t know which of those two things is what did it, but when I ordered, I got a 10% discount.