How to shower with a broken ankle!

I’m not ancient, I’m not decrepit, I wasn’t drinking, and I do generally look where I’m going but occasionally an uneven surface will catch out most of us!

When I broke my ankle my lovely neighbour Sue lent me her husband’s zimmer frame (fortunately he didn’t need it at that time) so I could get around the house easier with plaster of paris up to my knee. Getting round the house was easy. Showering? That was a different matter altogether!

So, in case you might need it in the future, here is my advice on how to have a shower with a broken ankle:

1. Get into shower cubicle.
2. Drag zimmer into shower after you.
3. Realise you’ve been so busy positioning the zimmer that you forgot to take your clothes off.
4. Take off clothes and start again.
5. Hook left leg (with broken ankle) over the top of the zimmer.
6. Realise you look like an advert for Readers’ Wives or Gynaecology magazine, start to cry.
7. Turn on shower, alternatively scalding and freezing your skin.
8. Bend over, balancing carefully, to reach shower gel, realising you look like an advert for an  even more specialist magazine. Cry some more.
9. Load sponge with shower gel, slather on body…where you can reach with one leg up and the good leg bent at the knee.
10. Realise that rinsing is going to be no fun at all….keeping left leg hooked over the zimmer in a vain attempt to keep the plaster dry, start to rinse off shower gel.
11. Notice that bandage round plaster of paris is drenched so aim to exit shower as quickly as possible.
12. Fling the zimmer out and hop after it.
13. Give up idea of washing hair in shower and head for the bath to lean over it instead.

WHAT I HAVE LEARNED…….if I lived on my own I’d just stay dirty until the plaster came off.