Beating the Bladder Blues

Chronic disease ain’t pretty. Some of the symptoms are messy and embarrassing.

I have to confess that I pee like a puppy that needs to be housebroken. I’ve felt embarrassed. I’ve cried. I’ve had a hard time looking anyone – especially my sons – in the eye. I just have to live with it.

2 Common Types of Bladder Issues

Most bladder issues fall into one of 2 categories:

Urgency – You have to go NOW.

Your internal early warning system isn’t working properly. By the time you realize that you need to go, you don’t have enough time to get to the bathroom before you start to go. Your muscles can be too weak to hold it in while you’re trying to get to a restroom.

Retention – You don’t get it all out of your bladder when you go.

Sometimes, the urine doesn’t all come out when you go to the bathroom. It’s an inconvenience because you have to go to the bathroom more often. But retaining pee also puts you also puts you at greater risk for urinary tract infections.

So what can you do?

Be Prepared

The Boy Scouts have it right. Having a bladder accident is bad enough. If you’re prepared, you can salvage some of your dignity by hiding all traces.  I put together Emergency Kits to help me when nature calls, such as:

• Purse – I stash a spare bladder pad just in case I leak while I’m out.
• Rollator – My rollator seat has a zippered pouch on the underside of the seat. It’s a great place to stash pads and disposable underwear. I’ll even put baby wipes in there so I can freshen up if necessary.
• Car – A good place to stash supplies. I also keep a pair of Emergency Pants for extreme situations.
• Desk drawers – At the office, you can keep supplies tucked into the back of a drawer to be accessible but out of sight.

You may not be able to stop an accident, but you can be prepared to keep it your secret.

Timed Voiding?

Timed voiding means going to the bathroom at scheduled times as part of “training” your bladder. It can be quite useful for people who don’t feel urgency – a body trigger that you need to go – by using the bathroom at regular intervals during the day.

While timed voiding has its advocates, it’s won’t help everyone. If you’re having retention issues, where your bladder doesn’t completely empty when you go, it may not offer enough benefits. If you’re having severe bladder issues, you may need to look into Botox injections in your bladder (sounds gross, but it’s an approved use for Botox) or self-catheterization.

My view? If my bladder could respond to training, I’d just to train it to hold my pee until I can get from the chair to the bathroom. My schedule is not the same each day, so it’s hard to determine times that would work each day. I do try and go before I get into the car to go anywhere. It’s not technically timed voiding. It qualifies more as the shouldn’t you have gone before we left? Philosophy. One of the worst feelings is sitting in the carpool lane and realizing that you have no way to get to a bathroom in time. I’ll usually sit on the toilet for a few minutes before I have to leave to try and get it out before it gets to me.

Recognize There Are Worse Things Than Peeing Yourself

Urinary incontinence can lead to worse than peeing at the wrong time/place. Sometimes, people respond to incontinence by drinking less. That leads to a different problem – dehydration.

Dehydration causes its own list of problems, including:

• Dry mouth
• Fatigue
• Headache
• Dizziness
• Heat sensitivity

This list should look familiar to those of us with chronic illness. So you’re adding insult to injury by making typical disease-related symptoms even worse.

I found out the hard way that I’d rather wet my pants than get dehydrated again. I tripped and fell off the garage steps, slamming my head into the concrete floor. My husband and kids found me in a pool of blood, pleading for them to call 911. After a trip to the ER, I was admitted to the hospital with a nasty case of vertigo.

I wouldn’t wish vertigo on my worst enemy. The world is constantly moving, even when you’re not. There are tiny stones in your middle ear that control your balance. When you knock them out of place, say bye-bye to your balance. I knocked them out of place in both ears. It was so awful that I willingly went through the nasty therapy I not-so-affectionately called The Vomitorium.

Have you ever played with a labyrinth puzzle? You move the board around to get little balls into holes on the maze. For The Vomitorium, I was the board. Three therapists picked me up and moved me around to juggle the ear stones into place. They told me that if it didn’t work, I could come back and let them try again. I cry every time I think about doing that again.

So Get Over the Embarrassment

I’ll now fill in a Family Feud board in the category Things That Are Worse Than Peeing Yourself:

• Learning that a teeny tiny scalp wound creates an above-ground swimming pool of blood.
• Figuring out ways to describe your vertigo without using the word dizzy. Two doctors asked me that. My answer? I felt like the Showcase Showdown wheel on The Price Is Right. *
• Hearing a therapist say, You will hate this, before treating your vertigo and realizing it was an understatement.
• Before said vertigo treatment: Listening to a nurse and a therapist debate whether I would throw up during the treatment since it had been 2 hours since I finished breakfast. They decided no. They were wrong.

Every time I change a leakage pad, I just remind myself it’s better than the alternative.

* Why yes, I like game shows. How can you tell?