Access magazine issue June/July 2014 edition, published 6th June 2014.
In this month’s Shooting from the Lip column, Brad Francis recalls classic comedy Dad’s Army and welcomes the promise of better treatments for urinary tract infections – but finds the results of a travel survey less than encouraging…
Following on from last month’s celebratory missive on Intermittent Self Catherisation (ISC), I’m going to talk about the downside – something so ghastly and harrowing that it can make people like me quiver and squeal like a frenzied fan at a One Direction gig, and not in a good way. I’m talking about the dreaded Urinary Tract Infection (UTI).
The culprit is Bacteriuria – bacteria present in urine, which can make your life unbearable until you get the infection under control with appropriate medication and a stringent after-care program. I speak with bitter experience of such infections, and am being brutally honest when I say that the effects of the resulting Hyperpyrexia (a fever exceeding 41°C or 106°F) alone is more distressing then when I suffered from brain stem stroke syndrome. Change for the better? If you have to regularly use a device like a catheter to disperse urine from your bladder, then you’ll be prone to picking up a UTI – after all, you’re essentially inserting a tube in yourself whilst going for a pee. Yet there somehow seems to be a lack of real understanding and empathy amongst medical professionals regarding the impact of UTIs on
catheter users.
Well, if I’ve got anything to do with it, things are going to change (says he with Captain Mainwaringesque gusto)! At the Naidex National show last month, I discovered that the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) is inviting patients to join a committee aimed at developing a quality standard of UTI care among adults. Hooray – does that mean something is going to be done at last?
I penned my application without hesitation, still reeling as I was from my last, and very painful UTI. Onwards and upwards…
For the last few months I’ve been banging on here about all things disabled with some degree of scepticism, which is actually very out of character for me. I’m usually a very positive and enthusiastic ‘Give it a go!’ type of guy. There are many sides to living with disability that can and should be celebrated – such as the ready availability these days of good quality accessible holidays and mini-breaks for travellers with disabilities, for example. Or perhaps not…
So-so service
You see, Vitalise (www.vitalise.org.uk) – a national charity that provides short breaks and respite holidays for disabled individuals and carers – recently commissioned a survey. It revealed how some of the UK’s most popular tourist attractions just aren’t up to scratch in terms of accessibility for disabled visitors – and that in any case, people with disabilities tend to have little faith in the accessibility claims that tourist attractions make. It’s fair to say that I always take such claims with a pinch of salt myself, and try to ‘keep it real’ when it comes to deciding where to go and what to do.
I would strongly urge everyone to plan and prepare for your needs when on holiday with military efficiency – or else be ‘doomed!’ as Dad’s Army’s Private Frazer might say. The Vitalise report seemed to support this. 85 of the country’s top 100 attractions were rated according to a number of considerations, including the availability of disabled toilets, and shock, horror – almost half of them had fewer than TWO disabled toilets for every hundred visitors. I’m personally somewhat baffled as to why UK holiday businesses aren’t trying harder to fight for our annual spending power, which is estimated at being in excess of £80 billion.
On this evidence, is it any wonder that people with disabilities have little faith in what they’re told when booking visits to the UK’s tourism hotspots? That said, ‘Don’t panic!’ (Thanks, Corporal Jones). Carry out your own research, just as you would ahead of any important health or medical decisions; check whether the destination has been written about in popular disability forums and blogs if you can – and above all, have a great time. Otherwise, you can always head for the European continent, perhaps France or Germany? I’m humming the Dad’s Army theme now…
