Getting Over the Ick Factor: Changing Adult Diapers

When my friends learn that my parents wear diapers and that I've been changing them for three years now, their responses vary from "I can't believe you do that" to "I could never do a thing like that" to "You should get a Nobel Prize for doing that."

Could this fear of poop actually be the reason why so many people decline to care for aging parents?

For many people, the prospect of changing an adult's diapers--particularly an adult who was once an authority figure, and whose privacy has remained intact for decades--is a psychological violation.

The good news is that the ick factor isn't really a barrier for caregivers. Let's see if we can demystify poop.

Since I began caring for my parents in 2008, I have been pooped upon, urinated upon, bled upon, and vomited upon. I've wiped up poop, I've mopped up poop, I've swept up dried poop, I've lost poop, and I've rediscovered poop.

But this is the truth: I'd rather be pooped upon than deal with any of my real problems.

I'd rather be pooped upon than deal with the bureaucrats at the HMO, than deal with the bank officers about my mother's IRA, than do my parents' income taxes, than pay the property taxes on my parents' home, than deal with healthcare-attendant agencies and their sometimes unreliable employees, than try to support my parents on their fixed income, than watch my mother have a heart attack right in front of me.

All of these things are far more stressful than dealing with a little poop. When you're pooped upon, you just wash it off and dry yourself with a towel and the problem is over in two seconds. I wish all of the challenges in life were this easy to wipe away.

Once you've worked with poop a couple of times, you'll be completely over it. Trust me on this one. The destructive powers of poop are way overrated.

You'll soon become like those nurses in hospitals who joke about their ability to clean up their patients' bed accidents, while looking forward to going on their break, so that they can nonchalantly eat chocolate pudding out of a specimen cup. They might even have a glass of apple juice with it.

The human brain compartmentalizes everything, and for normal people, poop gets its own, separate compartment very quickly.

You just don't think about poop when it's not around. And when it is around, you're so used to it that you don't think about it as poop anymore. It's just another mundane part of caring for your senior.

An even more surprising reality is this: When your elder has been constipated for two days, and you're dying from worry because none of the remedies are working, the thing you want most in the world to see is . . . poop, and a lot of it.

Believe me, you will pray for it to come.