Dementia taught me that our bodies are not us. We are a collection of memories and habits that need to be gummed together by a sweaty, sticky, saggy, and often stinky bundle of flesh, bones and trillions of bacteria. While initially appalled at the idea of breaking a dozen taboos and helping my mother in anything intimate, in the end it was either me or let her stew in her own juices. So I asked myself how she must be feeling to let herself get like that? How messed up and confused and even scared must she be?
My powers of empathy proved to be stronger than my powers of revulsion. I'm not one of these who's likely to say to children "you can be or do whatever you want to be, little sunbeams!" because that's not true. But we can all
try to be anything we want to be, even if we crash and burn. And we can all
try to do things that seem beyond us. That's how they come within our reach. So well done for trying and struggling.
However if my mother was in a care home I'm sure I'd rather get value for money for her £1k-£1.5k a week. As my mother would have said, you don't have a dog and bark yourself! But I've never been any good at asking anyone to do a job I'm not prepared to do myself, so I'd probably sort her out rather than bother anyone.
But that wouldn't make me a better person than someone who can't bring themselves to do such things. It just makes me someone who needs to clean their hands a bit more often and a bit more thoroughly than most.
To be honest though, I much prefer helping my mother in the loo to picking up our dog's poo. The dog didn't help raise me for the best part of two decades.... just tries to cut my life short by getting under my bloomin' feet!
PS To be practical rather than preachy, buy the nicest, most expensive air freshener you can justify and use it liberally. You never mask the jobbie in hand completely, but you can certainly make it wear fancy dress. And try muttering daft songs under your breath.... "Daddy's taking us for a poo, tomorrow..... poo, tomorrow.... poo, tomorrow! Daddy's taking us for a poo, tomorrow... we can poo all day!" or "If you're happy and you know it, wipe a bum!" Then there's the classic "Only poo, can make this world seem *****, Only you,oo,oo-oo-oo, can make this dark mess right!" Not forgetting the festive hit "So here it is, Merry Shitemass, Everybody's wiping bums!"
Sounds daft but you'll all be laughing on the other sides of your faces when I release Now That's What I Call Poosic Volumes 1-13 and rake in the (very) filthy lucre.
Seriously, read up a bit on any kind of phobia training and you can usually soon persuade your brain to be a bit less fussy. It's not always easy though, otherwise I wouldn't still scream like a girl* when a spider catches me by surprise.
[*The girl in question being Elizabeth Violet Bott, from the Just William books... "I'll thcream and thcream 'till I'm thick"!
PPS Of course my mother would probably be horrified that I was helping her sort herself out. But then my mother would also be horrified that I hadn't taken her up to the moors in the middle of winter and left her there rather than tolerate her dreadful decline. She'd probably think I deserve to be up to my elbows in poop for not respecting her wishes.
Such is life! Good luck with your mother.