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Eventually, a staff nurse would come and use a gloved finger to check that your bowels were empty; and then you would be showered. Often your bowels didn’t oblige and after half an hour or so, with you cold and acutely miserable on the hard plastic split seat of a shower chair, a staff nurse would come and put their fingers up your anus, stimulating the rectum until it released. Some nurses were better at it than others. They were the ones you loved because they were fast, efficient and gave you confidence that you would last the day without an accident. The ever-cheery Rosebud, one of my favourites, used to waggle her index finger and joke that she should have it insured as one of the best in the business. Without the willingness of spinal nurses to put their hands up dozens of backsides a day, closing their noses to the smell of faeces, the paralysed would die. It’s as simple as that. Perhaps it’s no surprise that death rates for spinal injuries improved after the invention of the disposable latex glove in the 1960s.