Lately, one of the least enjoyable aspects of caretaking for my uncle Arthur, in his senescence, has been that he seems to struggle with wiping his ass. So far I haven’t had to actually do it for him – he’s too proud to ask for help and too forgetful to mention it as an issue except in the moment.
I’m kept aware of it largely because I frequently find shit smeared all over the toilet seat.
I suspect the issue is twofold: 1) a lack of upper body flexibility, related to the severe arthritis in his shoulders, preventing him from reliably reaching the area in question, and 2) an extreme lack of situational awareness, an ongoing issue ever since his stroke in 2018.
Anyway, I deal with by carefully inspecting the toilet seat on a regular basis, and keeping a sprayer of cleaner near the toilet to clean it off when necessary. I have long ago discovered that trying to confront him about it or to “retrain” him on the issue is counterproductive, so I’m sure if I mentioned to him that this issue is ongoing and impacts my quality of life, he’d spiral off in a posture of defensive denial. Once on a related issue of pissing on the floor in the bathroom, his response was: “How do you know you didn’t do it?” Better to just keep quiet and forebear on these questions.
On the more positive side, I will report, for the record, that apparently, Arthur eats so much chocolate that his shit often smells like chocolate.
