Exploring what makes us incontinent

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Have you ever tried to find out why you are incontinent? I believe that incontinence is not always taken as seriously as it should be by the medical profession. I wonder whether there might be some of us that are curable but are being left with 'something we can live with'. I have been led to this thought by experiences with catheter blockages and the reactions of both medical and nursing professions:

https://livingwithacatheter.com/catheter-clogged-one-way-prevent/

I have been doubly incontinent since an accident causing spinal injury at cervical vertebrae 4 and 5 (in my neck) resulted in paralysis below that position. In my case my anal and urethral sphincter muscles are held closed except with manual intervention such as a urethral catheter or bowel evacuation. These sphincter muscles are controlled by the pudendal nerve, which issues from the spinal cord between sacral vertebrae 2,3 and 4 near the base of the spine. I am incontinent because instructions from my brain to open or close my anal and urethral sphincter muscles are not reaching my pudendal nerve because of my spinal injury in my neck. After spending seven months in a specialist spinal injury hospital, I was left with the impression that no-one had a clue how to repair nerve injuries: so I remain incontinent and paralysed with severe spasticity below my shoulder blades.

The situation might be more hopeful for others. Many, perhaps most, of those posting here seem to have the opposite problem - anal, or more commonly, urethral sphincters which they can not close, causing dribbles, or which they can not control to open and close when appropriate. Maybe damage to the pudendal nerve could be responsible?

Another cause of incontinence might be damage to the anal and urethral sphincter muscles themselves rather then the nerves controlling them. The anus is perhaps more likely to be injured than the urethra. In my bowel evacuations, the nurses are very careful to lubricate their fingers before inserting them and usually insert only one finger.

 

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Barry, I know you didn’t write this looking for sympathy, but you have mine nonetheless. You have far more to deal with every day than I. I’ll remember you in my prayers this morning at Mass. take care.

 

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Thank you Chuck. Your message means a lot to me. Barry

 

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Barry,

Thank you for sharing your research. You are one of the educated people in this forum who is educating the rest of us. Thank you for doing so.

 

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I think I come under the label of "Can live with it" with a little bit of help yearly with Botox, external catheters, day and night bags and intermittent catheters.

I know that when my back pain flares up, it causes me to leak urine and adding Diabetes to the melting pot, that causes me wanting to go up to 6 times a night and maybe part of leaking during the daytime.

I have been offered bladder neck incision surgery but am sitting on the fence as to whether it would help me or render me further incontinent. I can kind of continue to live with this as it is but I don't know how I would feel if the leaking gets worse and would probably stop everything and turn to a diaper full time. Not a decision I want to entertain at 52 years old.

Good topic though and thanks.

 

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My incontinence is caused by Diabetic related nerve damage and I'm told it cannot be cured. I have learned to live with it.

 

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My prayers are with you and all of us who suffer from incontinence.I always wonder why i am incontinent.never had a definitive answer to why o am.had my prostate removed and never regained control.2 sling surgeries , first 1 failed 2nd just a little better than what i was but still changing 3-4 times a day.My only solution seems to be a artificial sphincter surgery, i would really like another option but doesn't seem to be much.i have been dealing with this for 3yrs now and it is awful to be like this a young 55.

 

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Okay, this is a test,this is only a test. If it were a real incident, you wouldn't be able to use NACF.

I clicked on the NACF link in their email (which got me here, too), but the survey tab didn't work. It froze after the first click. Several times. If this posts, I will try to mention the issue to NACF.
If you had the problem with the survey, please try to get through to NACF and tell them.
Many thanks.
BARRYSimpson94: I went through all the tests at Virginia Mason Clinic, in Seattle, one of the top-rated clinics/hospitals in the country, where I've gone since 1980. Hell, I've out lived some of my doctors and been with some for decades. My wife, too. I have had absolute trust in them, and have been there for everything from routine yearly physicals to cancer, and all too many other issues & operations & Chemo.
They found nothing, and nothing they could do. At the time, my incontinence was about medium. I did get Physical Therapy at home (I don't live in Washington). I am on Enablex and it helps, some, for nighttime.
After a major operation (neurosurgery), my incontinence went to Bad. In three years, it has become down to relatively minor. Oddly enough, prostatectomy in 2003 didn't give me the incontinence. Then, anyway. I have developed spinal stenosis (probably misspelled that) and Peripheral Neuropathy, with don't seem connected to the issue. That is my conclusion and the Doctors. Being in the ICU on life support for Septic Shock is when it began, really, but not "serious", then.
They didn't use the word OAS (Over Active Bladder), which translate as "we don't know", nor did they say it was psycological.
So I went to Google Science (which leads to all the medical journals and scientific studies), and discovered, in my opinion, 2 things. (1) It isn't a lucrative specialty for doctors. (2) There has been comparatively little research. If NACF's goal, in the survey they announce today, get anywhere, that might change, as incontinence suffers come out of hiding. There a lot more of us than the studies show, except the studies to find the real numbers, and there isn't enough studies on that, either. It's like sex; huge numbers lie about it. (That's not a joke, even if it's a funny way to say it for sex)
Thank you for bring your issues and topic up.

 

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Thank you everyone for your kind comments and shrewd observations. I hope you will be sucessful in asking why you are incontinent and that some will find that you can be cured.