Double Leg Bag

Intro: Double Leg Bag

If you or someone you know must wear a urinary leg bag, you know that one of the most tedious things about it is emptying it frequently. Folks are encouraged to drink a lot of water to promote healthy kidneys and bladders, but all that water has to go somewhere!

This can make travel, going to the movies, anything that involves several hours of time a problem. When my husband was working (he's quadriplegic) it was embarrassing for him to ask someone to help him empty his leg bag every several hours.

So, we devised a double leg bag.This adds twice the storage capacity and cuts bathroom trips in half. I never thought too much about this idea, until I went to the doctor with my husband and the nurses in the office thought it was such a great idea.

I hope it helps someone else out there dealing with the same situation.

See it at my Etsy shop: http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=6369926.

STEP 1: Begin With 2 Bags

Here, I've removed the straps from the bags to make the image simpler to view.

Notice the little plastic clip at the bottom of the bags. We'll deal with them in the next step.

STEP 2: Remove Clip

One bag will eventually be placed on the wearer's thigh, held in place with the straps that come with the bags. From the bag that will go on the top, remove the bottom clip by opening it and slipping it off the rubber tubing attached to the bottom of the bag.

STEP 3: Join the Bags

Now, take the tubing that you just took the clip from, and join it to the top of the remaining bag, so that you've formed a chain of two bags.

The bottom bag will retain it's clip.

STEP 4: Add Straps & Wear

Now the bags are ready to go! Just put the straps on that come with the bags to hold them in place on your legs. The top bag will be placed at the thigh, with the join between bags at the knee.

You'll attach your catheter to the port at the top of the top bag. As the urine trickles in, it will be gravity fed to the second bag, then the top one.

This should double your time between trips to the restroom and allow you more freedom and less embarrassment.

Comments

[crapflinger]

that setup has to take forever to empty when you do finally empty it though... used to work in rehab (mainly orthopedic and stroke...but often times i had to go the brain injury and spinal chord side of the floor as well) so i know how much of a pain in the butt these things are to have on....anything that makes it to where you've got to empty less frequently has to be a god send... when i was working at the rehab center there was a company that came and did a demo of this "new product" that they were trying to develop...it was in the early stages..but if they ever get it finallized it should be really helpfull...instead of being a "liquid container" type deal...they have these "cartridges" that replace the leg bag portion...and their filled with this stuff (sort of like the stuff inside of diapers...but alot more absorbant)that will suck up all the urine and lock it into the substance...so you could wring the cartridge and it would stil hold the liquid inside of it...the ones they were showing us could hold about 2 liters of fluid...which depending on the leg bag...is about 2 to 3 times as much....then when it's full...you just disconnect it and chuck it in the trash like a diaper and hook up a fresh one...no emptying...no smell...no spills...i lost track of the company so i don't know if they ever got it to market..but if they did..i bet they're making bank

[cmoorecole]

both of these ideas are amazing. The general instructables population may want to skip over this, but this problem exists for some people and they are in need of some clever inventions. My SO has a similar problem with an ostomy bag. He finds it hard to sleep longer than 3 or 4 hours at a time or risk waking up to an exploding bag. The gel thing would probably work with ostomy patients like him, because his output is generally on the liquid side. It would be like a miracle for him to sleep all night and not worry about mishaps and extra laundry and I'd have a much pleasanter partner to wake up to.

[jessiep]

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