Woody the Safety Bloke gets personal….
Chats about how some people have to go to the loo after an accident.
Good day everyone, Woody here again. Got a strange one for you today, and probably a little bit embarrassed to share this one with you today, but one of the things that I didn’t know before I got hurt is that the spinal cord controls a lot of other things in your body; the things that I didn’t know about. It controls feeling. If you cut your spinal cord completely, you won’t be able to feel anything below where it’s cut. It also controls other things that your body does, like bodily functions. One of the things that the spinal cord controls is bowel and bladder control, or basically going to the toilet.
Now I want to share a quick story with you. When I had my accident, I got flown straight to hospital. They did a whole heap of different tests and procedures on me that day. Now, I don’t know what happened but I think I must have either fallen asleep or passed out at one stage. Then I woke up and I was lying in a hospital bed and for some reason, I just reached down to my groin area and I felt that there was a tube coming out of my penis – so like my dick. I just freaked out. I mean I had no idea how my body worked and I didn’t know how the spinal cord worked. So I just screamed out to one of the nurses that was in the room and I said, what the heck is this? And she explained to me that it was a catheter. Now, I’d never even heard of a catheter before I got hurt. But, I just I just want to show you something. This is what they call a catheter, and this is a single-use disposable catheter.
Now, some have spinal cord injuries they have to use this to go to the toilet. I mean just think about that for a minute. I want to show you something; look at this. So I’ll show you a close-up view of it. Basically, it’s a little plastic tube. It’s got a protective plastic cover on it, but if you take it out of that cover, basically that’s the tube that you have to put up the eye of your penis or for females into your private bits and it goes into your bladder, empties your bladder and then you pull it out and throw it away.
I mean, my eyes are watering just thinking about it. Imagine if you had to do that four or five times a day. So, these are the sort of things that you just don’t think about, until something what this happens to you and you’ve got to use this sort of thing. The cost – how about this – the cost of this sort of thing. I mean, I don’t know how much that’s worth just for one, but you’re probably looking at a lot of money. If you’ve got to use these four or five times a day, every day of the year for the rest of your life, that’s all going to add up to some huge amount of cost.
So yeah, think about that, and I know a lot of you are sitting there with your legs crossed as I speak. Anyhow, I’m Woody, don’t hurt yourself, you don’t want to have to use one of these. Stay safe Australia.
