Hi. My mom is 81. She fell and broke both hips almost a year ago. She is now living at home and uses a wheelchair or a walker. She has nighttime urinary incontinence (?? — she pees her bed every night). This is because she does not want to risk a nighttime trip to the toilet. She wears a diaper at night, but her clothes and the pads on her bed are drenched every morning. She launders the soiled items, and uses wipes to clean herself up every morning.
Besides the drudgery of dealing with this daily (which she never complains about), we worry about her skin. She claims that it is fine, but she is not a complainer and tends to gloss over problems. She and my father live alone in a state far from their children, so the kids cannot verify.
In researching online, I have seen external female urinals. If we could convince my mom to try these, does anyone have any knowledge about them? It would need to work for a woman lying flat on her back in bed...
I also used them on the furniture and certain areas on the floor.
I might have to do laundry two or three times a day. Still easier than all of the other work involved.
That being so, I should start with a good, stout commode placed beside her bed, which she can reach by sitting up, swinging her legs round to sit on the edge of the bed, then transfer to by standing and stepping round. She should be able to do this without at any time having to let go of balance supports (balance supports might include, for example, a bedstick or bed rail, her walking frame, and the arms of the commode).
You might also have a look at which brand and type of night-time diaper she is using, and compare a few others for her to try.
If she's amenable to the idea, it might be helpful for her to hire short-term in-home care for 2 x visits per day - one to help her get ready for bed, and the other to help her get up in the mornings. For example only, our service would visit her between seven and nine at night, and at seven or eight in the morning, and support her with managing her own care; but this is about reablement, not about making her dependent on care. The idea is to find routines and techniques that could help her manage things better, but independently and confidently.
If she doesn't like that suggestion, another would be to ask an occupational therapist for advice. Are you sure that her anxiety about the risk of falling is the whole story? If it is, or mostly, then it's a shame that this should be allowed to spoil her quality of life when there should be several ways of solving the difficulty that will suit her.