www.incontinentsupport.org

For me, my story begins in my childhood. When I was in either kindergarten or 1st grade, my parents put me in pullups to help with the pants wetting accidents. I think I stopped wearing them because I think I was discovered by an indiscreet teacher and fellow students. I remember having accidents through elementary school and into 6th and 7th grade. I was even given my own desk in a room I switched with to avoid other studen'ts desks getting pee on them So, from 8th grade on, I guess I stopped having full on accidents because my parents stopped having pants sent to the school. The one thing I absolutely HATED was the fact that these spare pants were always sweatpants and a different color than the pants I had on. Thus it was all too obvious that I had changed my pants. Anyway, fast forward to my teens and early 20s. I seemed to be mostly dry, with the occasional flood on the bathroom floor and down my pants leg before I got to the toilet and spots on my underwear. I eventually got the the point where I got tired of putting up with wet underwear and decided to wear protection and see a doctor. Guards were used, but did not stay in place and eventually proved to not be enough. Undergarments (the loin cloth) was used, only to turn out to be very uncomfortable with the bunching sides. I then went on to pullups. Anything to avoid full fleged diapers. Then the incontinence progressed in severity and frequency and I felt I had no choice. Pullups did not contain the larger voids and had gaps at the crotch and loose at the waist. I then bit the bullet and started wearing tape on briefs. I pursued every avenue of treatment and any explanation as to why I am incontinent. Several diagnoses were explored and ruled out including neuropathy, diabetes, etc. I eventually got treated for retaining and overflow incontinence and remained dry for 4 years. Then without warning my incontinence returned in 2014, was treated again, was dry for 4 months, and then after than started wetting again. I have since accepted the incontinence as a fact of life and diapers as my permanent form of underwear. When my incontinence came back in 2014, after have been dry for 4 years, I was ANGRY at having wetting accidents and being back in diapers. But a few months later, I decided to embrace it and stop pursing treatments, and that's when acceptanece got way easier, and life got easier.

Wayne,I have gone through the EXACT same thing you have in terms of unpredictablilty and wondering whetehr you are an impostor when wearing diapers and not getting them wet. I have had dry days, weeks and months, and then wet myself without warning. It's annoying. I wear tape on briefs 24/7 because any other protection style is inadequate for my worst episodes. I can flood and saturate a diaper with a deluge brought on by delayed voiding like nobody's business. Ergo, I'm pretty much stuck in diapers.

Peace out!

_________________
"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 am amazed how similar some of us are in regards to our bladder issues. I have been in and out of various forms of protection for years. Since my combined prostatectomy/diverticulotomy from nearly 4 years ago, I still have those days when I think I can win this battle. I can go several nights without any problems. In fact, I am on a 4 nights dry period at the present time. I start to think that maybe I can go to bed undiapered, but so far not brave enough to try. Day time is a different story. With all the water that my cardiologist is recommending I drink per day for heart failure, going unprotected is very chancy. As a result I have pretty much resolved the fact that It's diapers from here on out.

I get how the different coloured sweat pants would be the "dead give-away" in embarrassment terms. In grade three, my pants once got "bound" somehow when I was on the swings and they ripped from the crotch down the entire pant leg. The teacher then stapled my pants together rather than to send me home. I thought that was embarrassment. I can't imagine how sociologygeek's journey must have been. We did have a girl in grade 1 frequently peeing herself in the classroom. She was made to stand outside the school hall doorway until she dried off. I don't know if she had a medical problem. Classmates (including myself) never gave that any consideration.

And then the dp66 remarks about unpredictability-- I think I will stop trying to second guess this. If it is nerve damage from 20+ years of diabetes, then I need to just accept my situation and soldier on. My better half is supportive, even though I know she would prefer things were as before. I wish that I could convince her to wear a diaper on outings so that we can do things that are not near a bathroom. She'll use protection at times but never to avoid a bathroom, so I've not pushed the issue. It's so much fun heading into the sunset years. Today, I'm trying to adjust to the alpha-blocker for BPH that I started.

A quick update/rant on my own journey, that I wrote a few posts back. Back there I had complained about the "not knowing for sure". That has now changed.

Saturday I went shopping with an older relative when I had several urgent bladder episodes over the space of an hour. Then I thought I'd try real hard after the initial IC fail (into the pull-up) to keep it as dry as otherwise possible. Without thinking about it, the urge came back within minutes to continue the void that I had somehow managed to stop. The cycle repeated several times and eventually became difficult to stop. They finally ended when my bladder reached about half empty. The reality was obvious re IC. And without wearing the pull-up, it would have been a public embarrassment disaster in the store.

The clarity is good at this point but at the same time I find this confirmation depressing. Since the beginning, I guess I was hoping there was a mistake, mis-diagnosis or over-thinking of this issue. Then I could just be done with this "prevention" stuff and chalk it up to a mistake and return to normal. Now however, this issue has become very real.

I can face my family no problem about this, on an "as needed" basis. But it got me thinking about other situations like coming home soaked and realizing that friends have stopped by and are sitting in the living room. I can't just enter and announce that I need to shower and change my diaper. That stigma. Even if I did that, I don't want my wife to be embarrassed by that. It seems that I need to start planning strategies for discrete diaper disposal and cleanup. Maybe I need to re-evaluate the role of the pull-up. I could just continue to wear a fully absorbent diaper in that scenario, as long as the smell/leaking wasn't a problem.

I don't normally experience depression but this bothered me. This is for life and is going to get worse, with no cure for nerve damage. And that is on top of other diabetes issues. I do appreciate the life that God has granted me even if it means becoming blind in a diaper. I've since become more aware of the stigma of this in daily life. It makes me think of others that have endured this since childhood. Nobody I know locally understands any of this. How can they? My wife tries to understand but otherwise doesn't really want to. Who would want to?

So group, like it or not, I have officially joined the ranks of the incontinent this weekend. The initial assessments were correct.

Please allow me to end this rant with the assertion that the advice from this board to be "protected" was good advice. It saved my face for the few times when it was needed.

It can be difficult to accept the label and status of incontinence, both due to the stigma of incontinence and the fact that we like to be in control ov everything including when and how we use the bathroom. When that control slips beyond us, it is hard to accept. I applaud you in coming to terms with your condition. Do not be ashamed, you are not alone. Incontinence affects male and females of ALL ages. There are chidlren dealing with daytime incontinence, as well as teens and young adults. You are not alone. Find protection you trust, and move forward with life with your head held up high.

All the best.

Rob

_________________
"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

Thanks Rob for your encouragement. My acceptance for the loss of control and getting over the "humbling" within society is going to take some time. But I'm feeling a little better about it today, mainly because I can't stay gloomy.

Looking back over the past decade or so, I can see that I was dealing with incontinence for a while but it was only less than a couple years ago that I finally reached the point where I knew I had to do something about it. It started as just experiencing times when I had to go to the restroom more frequently, but I wrote that off as just being due to consuming too much liquid or known diuretics like coffee or tea. Gradually those occurrences increased over the years and later I figured out that I was going to the restroom twenty or more times many days. Eventually I noticed post-micturition dribble. At night the feelings of needing to urinate, regardless of how full my bladder was, was making my insomnia even worse. I later realized that for many years I hadn't been able to reliably tell how full my bladder was. I'm still not sure what was the exact thing that triggered me to look into protection but I rather quickly cycled through a few different types and within months was wearing tape-on diapers full-time.

Although I have a little less bladder control than a couple years ago, I could probably still get away with lighter protection much of the time and even no protection some of the time. This is one of the most frustrating things to me since sometimes I still feel that I'm wearing a level of protection that's unnecessary. Yet I have to wear fairly heavy protection all the time because I don't know when and how much my bladder will spontaneously empty. Being more confident in my protection means I don't have to worry nearly as much when I feel a bladder loss, though I actually end up experiencing more of them (ugh), and I'm in less pain in my bladder area. But self-doubt and self-consciousness still crop up for me a lot.

If there is one good thing that came out of my incontinence, it's that I finally got serious about figuring out some health issues I've been dealing with for years that are leaving me increasingly disabled. I don't definitively know the source of my incontinence, but the symptoms seem to fit under the umbrella of neurogenic bladder dysfunction that I suspect is due to mild nerve compression in my lower lumbar spine, where damage is evident in imaging. In the past couple years, between imaging, labs, and multiple doctors (primary case, neurologist, and rheumatologist), I ended up diagnosed with mild nerve issues and two forms of autoimmune arthritis, and soon I'll be seeing an endocrinologist for a possible glandular issue.

One of the hardest things these past few years has been reconciling how I can outwardly appear "healthy" with my increasing level of disability, and my most recent diagnoses have made that even harder in many ways. Maybe more than ever-present symptoms like pain, fatigue, and brain fog, the multiple times a day I put on a diaper might be the thing that most makes where I'm at in life real to me, even though, as far as symptoms go, incontinence is far from the worst symptom I deal with on a daily basis.

outofmemoryerror:

I think this is the mental struggle that I am still working through. I don't feel like I belong (in a diaper). I don't feel like I should be IC. Apart from diabetes related issues, I am ok. But this nerve damage thing is enough of a problem that it can't be ignored. To cast more doubt, I don't wet in my sleep. I wake up dry and as long as I don't dilly dally before going to the toilet, I have control. But wait too long, then control is lost. At the home and the office, things are normal because I have ready access to the toilet. But if the bathroom is occupied, then the reality smacks me in the face again.


That is very frustrating. If the problem was consistent, then there would be less self doubt. Sometimes I go an entire work week without an accident. I end up discarding a full grocery bag of worn dry pull-ups. This again seems so wrong! I feel like a pretender.

With summer coming, I am now planning for outdoor events where the toilet is more than 30 seconds away. It seems so unnatural to wear a pull-up that is super thick so that I can last 4-8 hours without leaking. In my test this weekend I felt like an astronaut around my waist with everything jammed into my jeans (pull-up + PUL pants). I do need larger jeans but this isn't helping me mentally.

Best of luck on your getting a good diagnosis and some improved related health. The physics of our protection isn't complicated but the mental aspects are indeed trying. The one piece of advice that I have gleaned from this forum is the need for protection. So even though it seems like over-protection, that is to be preferred over embarrassment. That has sound logic but accepting it seems to be the trick.