Showering

Hi,

I have been doing PD at home for a month and was told I could start taking a shower without covering up my catheter which makes me nervous any suggestions to ease my nerves.

Use tegaderm and cover it up anyway. What’s it going to hurt? You will never be sorry that you were too careful.

I leave the catheter covered while showering and then just change the dressing as soon as I get out of the shower. I have not had any problems with infections so it must be OK - i have been doing it for 6 months this way. Just be sure to clean the exit site with peroxide to get rid of any soap from the shower.

I have been on pd for 9 years and have taken baths every since. My doc is in dismay but I am the only patient in the unit that has never had an infection. The bath water evedently cleans out the catheter area, of course my exit site is fully healed. Two years my pd nurse convinced me to use Gentamiacin befor covering with a bandage afterward. I don’t use any disinfectants, but I don’t allow anyone else near my exit site.

Hi there

Since resting my tenckhoff for the required 6 wks I have not covered my exit site whilst showering, EVER! Once the site is healed I was taught that this was OK. I have never had problems with infections since Dec 05. I use an antibacterial wash for the actual exit site & used my regular shower gel for the rest of my body. As I said I’ve never had any problems. I don’t even tape or cover my exit site during the day/night as my skin reacts to the tape (I’ve tried 3 different kinds of tape). All I use is a piece of swimwear elastic (clear) tied around my waist to wrap the tube around & keep it out of the way & one piece of gauze swab draped across the elastic at the exit site. This has been the best solution for me.
Hope this helps!
Cheers, Aussie Angie.

hi. Ive been doing dial for 3 and half years and not covering the catheter when showering. My PD nersus when they check my tube and exit site say how clean it is every time they check it. So wouldnt worry too much because at first i was too because i thought the soap and water etc would go in to the open wound but they said its ok. Thats why you take showers instead of baths because if you lay in water whats got abit of skum in it that skum is more likely to get into the hole then if you was showering.

Hopw that makes sence.

i take baths too. i have a super clean site. never an infection. i just dry it well after

As an RN working in the hospital, I had to shower many patients with many different types of catheters, wounds, incisions, etc…We used a product named shower shield and I just found it today at Wal Mart. It is very affordable and looks just like the product we used in-patient. I used it the other day to cover a ‘strawberry’ my son got while playint t-ball. In the hospital we used it mostly for central lines and periphereal IV’s and stuff like that.

Thanks so much for sharing that, Doug! I’m really surprised that you were able to find this at WalMart–but that should make it easy for a lot of folks. :slight_smile:

I have been using PD for four months and after 6 weeks When my site was all healed I finally can take a shower at first very carefully but now I do shower every other day they gave me gentamicin and after I dry myself use the cleaning solution I dry with some gauze and put a new waterproof bandage just in case I get the bandage wet and off I go. Sometimes I even wear belts to hold it up instead of dangling. I made 100% cotton belts the morning after I got my catheter