Mind Over Bladder

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As a child I had wet the bed a lot. As I grew and got to 10 years old, nothing had changed. I suffered from very evil-nightmares and I attributed it to having Leukemia at 3 years old and maybe it was the long-term effects of the Chemo. But regardless, waking up wet was not a pleasant experience.

In time, the bed wetting became less frequent and I had noticed it was because I was having less frequent nightmares. Then my parents decided to pull me out of Catholic School because they didn't like how the teachers were, and over the summer, I had a major change in both the nightmares and the bed wetting. By the time I had to return to (public) school, both had stopped.

I know there are solely physical conditions that will cause a person to wet the bed, and if you do not wet the bed every night, have you noticed a correlation between your mind and incontinence? I only ask this because some people take a doctor's words and diagnosis as truth/fact. But we are all different and may not fit the textbook description. Our mind is more powerful than anything, but unfortunately it can easily work against us. So I just wanted to put this out there so if it's not something you've thought about, maybe this can help you turn things around even if it's just a little here and there.

Close your eyes and ask yourself if you are happy. If not, how can you become happy. Are you stressed, if so what about and how can you minimize the stress. It's deep stuff, but you can start off slowly. What are your thoughts on this?

 

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Yes Indeed... I love how you related this topic to real life choices we all make in our journey in life and the positive side effects of a healthy wellbeing of our souls.

 

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Stress can make incontinence worse, for sure. Glad you got to switch to public school.

 

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It is truly amazing what the human mind is capable of. However to get its full potential one has to be very open with oneself and able to understand benefits of meditation and understand how much power each of us has in our minds. As our minds can be our worst enemy. It’s changing the way we think to be more supportive and positive. Basically avoiding self sabotage which some of us are or were masters of.

And then challenging these trains of thought onto our daily struggles.

Great topic of discussion “Deanlikestohelp”

 

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@Jwh51 you are absolutely correct! I hope more and more persons understand this.

 

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@DeanLikesToHelp I had the opposite experience when changing schools. I went to Catholic school for my first eight grades, and then had to switch to public school. I never got comfortable with the very much larger public schools. I didn't fit in and began to dread going to school. That is when I first had an incident of daytime incontinence. It was around the same time that my home life got bad. My father was an alcoholic and made my life a living hell. Both things were contributors to my problem. I'm still carrying that baggage.

 

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@Jamie325 isn't it amazing how 2 persons can have almost total opposite experiences? Yea I was in Catholic school until I was able to go to public junior high. My nightmares I had were a lot to do with hell and being punished in front of the class because I always challenged the religion teachings. I was always naked in my dreams and usually in front of large classrooms and people in general. Ironic because that's kinda what my real life turned out to be lol. But at that age I didn't understand it and that combined with horrible dreams really wreaked havoc on my bladder overnight.

 

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DeanLikesToHelp said: “I was always naked in my dreams and usually in front of large classrooms and people in general. Ironic because that's kinda what my real life turned out to be lol.”

Your real life turned out to be naked in front of large classrooms and people in general????? What do you do????

Sorry, couldn’t resist.

 

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@LeeC hey Lee, I was trying to leave a little mystery here lol. But anyways yes, since my Spinal Cord Injury in 95 I have given many live demonstrations of how I cath to newly injured individuals, caretakers, student nurses, etc. Occasionally it’s a group of them in a conference room sitting in a large circle with me in the center. I also demonstrate dressing, undressing, checking skin for pressure marks with a mirror, all the important things a person (quadriplegic) in a wheelchair needs to know to be independent and avoid pressure sores and UTI’s. My full demo goes like this...

1- introduction
2- transfer to mat
3- undress
4- skin check for redness
5- transfer to chair (without catching your balls on the transfer board)
6- catheterize with an erection (easier that way)
7- open up for a q&a (while waiting for erection to go away)
8- catheterize without an erection (for those who can’t get hard)
9- transfer to mat
10- get dressed without any adaptive devices.

It’s the Q&A part of when I’m naked in front of the group that maybe my dreams were foreshadowing. But I’m comfortable with it because it greatly helps those with injuries and the ones who take care of them.

Very few people ask why I choose not to cover up during the Q&A and honestly, I did a couple of times early on, but I noticed that when I don’t, those there are more prone to asking more and better questions. If I project comfort and confidence when naked, their fear of asking something isn’t there and they ask lots of questions.

Hope that makes sense.

 

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Well, I guess you told me! LOLOL. I feel deflated. I thought I was being so funny. I’m impressed with you commitment to help!

 

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I notice that as a child you had bed wetting issues and nightmares. Me too. The big bad wolf was always after me in the dreams, at least those are the ones I still remember. Seems to me that many of us that had bed wetting issues when young, often develop wetting issues when older. At least that is my case. But then throughout my entire life I seem to have had a small bladder. I guess when young our control is still developing and when old it is diminishing.
Any others think that bladder capacity has a bearing on this?

 

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@LeeC too funny. I just tell it as it is. I lost the ability to be shy long ago lol.

@Bobby103 bladder capacity plays a big role in the ability to retain urine and not leak. Someone close to me was born with a small bladder and had surgery to enlarge it. She has no leaking issues ever since and can hold way more than I can comfortably

 

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I have never heard of surgery to enlarge the bladder. Sounds interesting. How was it done? I may be too old to bother at this point or maybe not.

 

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Dean I have to commend you on your freeness and openness. The amount of guidance and support you provide people who are thrown into a similar situation like yourself is just amazing and something many people will truly respect as I do and I am in a different country. Lol. The other thing you are a living example of is doctors see everything and people do not need to be shy or avoid talking to their doctors about incontinence etc. Doctors have heard and seen it all. One of our family friends is an ER doc and one my of most memorable comments from her was “my patients have given me multiple new meanings to kinder surprise eggs.” Lol. Basically a kids chocolate candy egg with a toy inside and it’s the plastic egg container that’s surrounds the toy that patients have stuck in multiple different holes in the human body stuffed with multiple different things. And then if someone is shy or avoiding taking about erection difficulties with their doctor or even incontinence at least you aren’t stuffing a plastic egg filled with cocaine up your bum. Lol. What do you need to worry about. Literally doctors have seen it all.

It is truly amazing once we all accept ourselves for who we are the power it unlocks within because all of a sudden you are not wasting energy on what people think about you etc. It’s all wasted energy that you are never able to get back. I truly have a similar attitude in that I truly do not care what people think about me I am just myself. My ms diagnosis was paralyzing at the beginning of receiving the diagnosis. But since then I have done stupid amounts of counseling and corrected anything in my life that is not supportive of me. Negative energy, people who don’t know themselves or don’t want to change and get better are not my type of friends. Realized my family and upbringing was not the most supportive or loving since I truly do not believe my parents know how to deal with their emotions etc and it’s truly sad in that they do not know how to have fun.

I am very thankful for my wife and my two children and we get along great and all have fun together. And my diagnosis was my smack in the head to wake up and make life what I want it to be. Learn how to slow down to the speed of life and not let the small moments pass me by without even seeing or enjoying them.

Life is not fair and life can suck but it’s up to us how we want to live our life and I truly respect how you are doing that Dean and it’s awesome to see.

 

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@Bobby103 she has Spina Bifida and was born with a small bladder. She had collagen done, Botox, etc, but they were temporary fixes. Finally they chose to do a “bladder augmentation” where they use a section of the colon and use it to increase the bladder capacity. It fixed her leaking. No meds or anything since 1999. It’s just a difficult surgery to get approved. Surgery back then took 7 hours.

 

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I will live with what I got. Thanks for the info.

 

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Dean another question to you.

How did you get your spinal injury in the first place??

 

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@Jwh51 thank you for your kind words. I totally agree with everything you said and just reading what you wrote is what inspires me to continue doing what I do. It’s reassuring to know that others out there can see things from my perspective. I was going to post something last night about how we perceive ourselves and how we accept ourselves, but I fell asleep. Now after reading what you wrote I feel even more inclined to post it. Thank you!

 

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@Jwh51 check out my injury link on my website TheWheelDean.com