When you travel and have urinary incontinence or other bladder control problems, you may need to do extra preparations.
Taking certain precautions and doing some research as you make your travel plans can make a big difference in how well you manage your Elderly Travellers urinary incontinence while away from home.
AWAY PREPARATION
The Flight
Whether driving, flying or sightseeing, plan ahead by having products on hand.
As I mentioned in the Baggage section mum has a slight incontinence problem so we always carry incontinence pads with us, to be a little more discreet on the plane I have found a purse that holds two incontinence pads, a small plastic bag,wipes, tissues and a lipstick and a comb. So if she goes to the bathroom she carries this purse with her.
We always carry flushable toilet wipes to keep skin clean and dry, often destinations have no toilet paper.
In fact we always travel with extra tissues, wipes, and plastic tie up bags for disposing of incontinence pads in my backpack or daybag.
Many foreign public toilets have no disposal facilities, everything just sits in an open waste paper basket the side of the toilet.In fact most do not even let you flush toilet paper as the sewerage system pipes are to old or small in that city, so be prepared for that to be in an open waste paper basket the side of the toilet.
If you want to buy the smallest plastic tie up bags that are handy for travelling you can often find the plastic tie up bags in the period pad aisle at the shops.
~~
When you are preparing for the flight
Monitoring fluid intake
I always make sure my Elderly Traveller does not have any extra fluid, either before we leave home or at the airport. If something like cranberry juice makes her 'want to go' more often we avoid that too.
Empty
Make sure she (and you) empty your bladder before you get on a plane. In fact we always have another try just in case, just before they start to call boarding - as an extra precaution.
Seating
Book an aisle seat. You want to make getting to the bathroom as easy as possible for
Elderly Traveller. You don't want them to have to struggle over sleeping passengers , or even worse, be too polite to struggle over sleeping passengers, to get to the bathroom.
As I mentioned in Travels with my mum -Entertainment- Apps
Seat guru is a great place to actually plan your seat.
If you have more frequent trips to the bathroom plan a seat nearer.
If people queueing and standing next to you while waiting for their turn, the door opening and closing, the loud vacuum flush sound is more likely to disturb you, sit further away
BEST TIP -
If you can see the food/drinks/duty free cart in the distance, get up to go to the toilet NOW
Do not wait until the cart heads down your aisle by then its too late to get out of your seat.
- Once the carts arrive, tray tables are down and that makes it twice as awkward .
- Do not drink and fill up on more liquid until emptying what you have.
- Everyone wakes up for food and drink so once they wake up the queue will be longer
~~~~~~
I do not drink coffee, in fact I very strongly dislike the smell of coffee. I can tell when the flight attendants are brewing up to start the cart run just by the smell of coffee.
We start our restroom trip then.
We are usually the first there, people have asked me if I am psychic as I know just before the carts make an appearance.
http://www.lonelyplanet.com/blog/2011/07/13/how-not-to-behave-on-an-airplane-a-passengers-bill-of-rights/
Travelling with Incontinence 4
No comments:
Post a Comment