Ask Me Anything: What You Need To Know About Peeing Your Pants.
Recently, I asked fellow Trippers to send me the deep, dark questions about multiple sclerosis that need answering, and you guys didn’t hold back. I got so many great questions that I decided to split them into a few posts. As always, talk to your doctor. This isn’t professional advice. This is more like a psychic hotline that somehow knows the letters M and S mean something to you, and then predicts you will fall down the stairs. Spooky, right? But not medical advice!
Your first questions were about one of the more distressing symptoms of MS, which also happens to be among the most common: the messed up bladder. From retention to incontinence, if you have MS, chances are your bladder is trying to ruin your life. If you’re among the fortunate few whose bladder isn’t a controlling jerk, well, start doing your kegels just in case.
Nobody wants to talk about bladder issues, but I am here for you. As someone who has peed her pants in so many inappropriate places, I’m taking one for the team, and spilling my secrets on how I’ve dealt with it.
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| Where were you when I needed you? |
Cheryl B asks:
Are there any medications that are successful with treating bladder issues (I wake up every two hours during night/bedtime to go to the bathroom). My neurologist only recommends self-catheterization and I do not want to do that.
Anonymous cuts right to the chase:
Diapers or catheter? My MS incontinence is pretty much the least sexy thing I can think of, so I don’t really want to talk to my husband about it.
Answer:
Ladies, I hear you. Double-voiding and limiting caffeine might work for some is a bullshit solution. I wish it were as simple as a pill; I know that catheterization sounds extreme, and just typing the word diaper hurts my horcrux, the idea is so appalling to me. Then again, so is publicly losing my shit. The point is, this thing is complicated.
I have no experience with diapers, except I’m pretty sure I was a baby once. As an adult who likes to wear skinny jeans, and (no judgement), isn’t into kink (ok, some judgement); I’m not a fan. I realize I have to get over myself, because I don’t wanna contribute to stigma around the tools we must learn to love in order to blah, blah our best MS lives. So, let’s agree that diapers are helpful for some, and fucking call them something less…diapery. Like sparkle pants or les couches fantastiques.
Because even merde sounds better in French.
If you’re a regular reader, you’ll know that the clear winner for me is self-catheterization, which sounds terrifying, but is really just a fancy way of saying ‘tapping the keg’, which is just a trashy way of saying the “gold standard for medical bladder emptying” which is wikipedia’s way of giving me first prize for peeing. Medically.
Okay, maybe medical bladder emptying still sounds terrifying; or at the very least, confusing, but as a long-time practitioner, I can tell you it has liberated me (like for realz, not in the Zamboni way, if you’ve been around long enough to remember those dashed dreams). You can read my love letter to Cathy here.
Catheterization is not without its cons. I need regular antibiotics to ward off UTI’s and supplies can be hella expensive. Plus, I obsess over antibiotics messing with my gut biome, but that’s a topic for another day. Self-cathing isn’t for everyone, but not because it hurts (it doesn’t), or because of stigma (fuck that).
But wait! There’s more.
Before committing to sparkle pants or making friends with Cathy, most people with MS will try one or more of a number of medications whose goal it is to keep your pee inside you. Again, everyone is different but these drugs were not helpful for me. Preventing urgency made my retention worse, and caused side effects like dry mouth and constipation. If you think dry mouth doesn’t sound so bad, it’s because you’re not open-mouth kissing me, and if you think constipation is NBD, I’m so happy for you; you probably don’t have MS.
Another option for wrangling your bitchy bladder is botox, which I have not experimented with, but have heard good things about. This is probably the most aggressive way to go. If you’re gonna get botox, you have to have first failed on the meds, and be willing to use a catheter full-time, because once you botox you can no longer freestyle at all.
The good news is, you have options, so explore them. Many, like me, have been able to get this under control. Don’t suffer. For gods sakes don’t stop drinking.
Okay, but what about bringing sexy back?
Anonymous, like a lot of us, wants to keep things sexy in a decidedly unsexy sitch. And here’s where the emotional cost of MS comes into play. I get it. Feeling diminished by this disease is balls. I don’t even like getting dressed with The Banker in the room because I don’t want him to see me wrangle my twisted, dead-weight legs into my lululemons, as I fail to keep from sliding off the bed and have to use a 17-step procedure to pull myself up again. No. I need to trick him into thinking I’m a graceful ballerina while I tell myself he hasn’t noticed my Frankensteinian gait because I’m wearing a push-up bra.
MS might be fucking up my body, but I still need to feel, and be seen as, capable, strong, independent, and yeah, sexy. Hopefully Mr. Anonymous will support whichever way you decide to manage this, because trust me, it is manageable. And nothing is sexier than having your shit together. So to speak.
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