www.incontinentsupport.org

I've been taking vesicare for about 3 months now. I find that it helps. I have occasional frequency during the day. If I don't have access to a bathroom for an hour or two I still use a diaper. Sometimes I come back dry sometimes I don't. I still wet some at night but just a little. I'm not drenching anymore and am only wet a couple nights a week. I started to take Metamucil at night to deal with the constipation. Which has helped. My biggest issue was that it completely drained my energy away. I found by taking it at night. My energy is better and the constipation is not as bad.

The vesicare is definitely not working for me at all....It was and now its abruptly stopped....I am still thinking about trying the 10mg dose on my own but don't know if I have enough of the medication to get through till I can see the new Uro on 6/2.......

If you are not getting any benefit on 5mg, the chances are 10mg isn't going to help. How long have you been on the 5mg? Some people seem to think it takes a while for the effects to kick in.

I'm not sure how helpful these sort of drugs are, personally, since unless one can leave protection off one is little better off.

ive been on VESIcare too, and it helped MARIGNALLY for me.. but, really, since my issue wasn't OAB..but rather retaining urine (overflow incon) it didnt help leakage much, though somehow reduced it. But it had DANGEROUS side effects. I got quite dizzy, which was really dangerous for me..because i was driving at the time.. just managed to pull it out when i was at a traffic stop.. did it help get me back in underwear? Not really...at the time, I had 3-5 accidents a day with out it and 3 with..so it was really a marginal improvement...so, in a nutshell.. IMHO and ind my expereince..it aint worth the risk

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"We cannot do great things. We can only do small things with great love" Mother Teresa

"THERE ARE FOUR LIGHTS!" - Captain Picard from Chain of Command, Part II

I have been on it since April 28. I waited the 10 days for it to work. It seemed to help a little bit. I was seeing a reduction in frequency and was sleeping through the night. A week or so ago, it abruptly stopped working. I am still taking it, however. as I have switched urologists in the meantime and I wont see the new uro until 6/2 so I suspect his first course of action is to bump the dose to 10mg when I do get in to see him.....there again....you never know.....It never helped with the accidents, I didn't expect that it was going to. I just hoped that it was going to decrease my frequency.

Because. I did not see the point in trying mybertiq since insurance doesn't cover it, I decided to humor the urologist and accept his recommendation of vesicare to try. He gave me 5 mg sample and a script to order more later.

I have an appointment in February to see him again.

Some of the side affects listed are a little troubling, particularly dry eyes or blurry eyes. The box says do not drive until you know how it affects you. Typically how long is it until you see a) whether it works and b) if there are side affects?

If I recall it takes approximately 10 days to begin working. As far as the side effects I cannot remember but I would think you would have side effects within the first few days if you were going to. I stopped taking all of the medications in early summer this year. I got tired of having side effects and not having any improvement of my symptoms. I have been wearing diapers since late February/early March. They have yet to let me down. I began using catheters in early June and those have worked well for me as well......having surgery next week to see if I have a spinal dural arteriovenous fistula or in layman's terms an abnormal blood vessel on my spinal cord which MAY be causing this.......we'll see

Having been a couple of years ago, here's what I recall:

a) how long to see if it works -- for me it was rather apparent after about 3 or 4 days. My regular drip-drip-drip pretty much dried up and the sudden "gotta go NOW" went to what I would call normal. But after several weeks, I started to return to the old problems of constant dribbling and the "emergency, going-now" syndrome with nearly no ability to control the emergency. So my uro upped me from 5mg to 10mg. My leaky symptoms disappeared again ... and seemed to stay away ... but after a 3 or 4 weeks ...

b). side effects -- yikes! Some dizziness when I did activities that raced my heartbeat (for example, walking up a steep hill caused me to start feeling dizzy). And then there was the constipation: that was *not* fun.

The benefits of regaining a good portion of my bladder control at 10mg did not outweigh the side effects ... So I made the choice to rely on diapers and not jack up my body with chemicals.

ILuVLA,

Here you point out hte major downside of medicaiton.. even if it does work, it doesnt last! Also, I'm assuming that all these meds wear off at a certian point? What do you do after it wears off?? If you were weraing regular undies and it wore off and suddenly.. bam i need to pee..youd be soaked... for me..after 3 weeks the Myrbetriq seemed to reduce episodes from say old faitful to a steady drip drip drip drip drip... but that was after 3 weeks.. but i was having intermittent pelvic pain that made me concerened.. so after talking to my urologist.. went off it.. Yes, there has been an increase in wetting.. somewhat.. but honestly.. to me.. if a drug doesnt get me back in regular underwear 100% theres no diffence between niagra falls and a small puddle..both require 24/7 protection..one just uses less diapers..

Peace out!

Rob

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"We cannot do great things. We can only do small things with great love" Mother Teresa

"THERE ARE FOUR LIGHTS!" - Captain Picard from Chain of Command, Part II

There's also the side-effect I found that hasn't been mentioned - constipation. I tried out one of these drugs some months ago and found that I was unable to 'go' at all Of course, bunged up bowels put pressure on the bladder and might make the bladder worse and not better.