www.incontinentsupport.org

Maybe they close a curtain and my caregiver lies me down and changes my diaper

I fly .. LONG FLIGHTS .. and I fly them often. Is fourteen+ (14) hours to Hong Kong a LONG flight .. the airlines think it is. Someday I'd like to explore what I believe to be a fact .. each of us has DIFFERING DEGREES of incontinence. I avoid naming this as a this topic because you then risk getting into a 'pecking order' discussion .. as in .. WELL ! MY incontinence is WORSE than your incontinence is ! I DO 'get-a-feeling' when I am about to void. Some or many of you never get that 'OH OH I-am-about-to-void feeling' due to nerve damage. Some of you dribble dribble dribble and never get 'hit with a FLOOD'. What happens to me is this : From the instant I receive that 'OH OH I-am-about-to-void feeling' I have (and I NEVER KNOW what it will be) from 30 seconds to 5 minutes before the involuntary void (FLOOD) happens. For this reason .. the 30-seconds to 5 minute warning period that I am BLESSED TO HAVE .. when I am at home and close to a toilet .. I can get-away-with not wearing absorbent full maximum protection. At home I WILL wear the pull-up products so I DO have some protection at all times.

Now to the long-haul International Flights. NO .. NEVER have I asked for any assistance. NO .. I do not restrict nor limit my fluid intakes .. never ever .. at home or in-the-air. Dehydration KILLS me dead. Because I wear 'serious' absorbent protection with cotton knee-pants between the pads and plastic long-leg knee-pants (bloomers if you must call them such) and because I CAN sometimes (this allows me to save absorbent capacity of the pad) make-it-to-the-airliner-toilet .. usually .. not always .. but usually I can make it the 14+ hours with no change. I DO carry a 'change' with me at all times IN CASE I need to change.

When I must change due to serious saturation of the absorbent pad (GEEZ .. do any of you HATE to call them Diapers like I hate to call them?) OFTEN I will put the wet diaper into a double-plastic (shopping type of bag) and just stow the wet diaper in the overhead compartment until exiting the airliner. YES sometimes I HAVE (and it is a challenge to do so) disposed of a wet diaper in the airliner rest room. The trick to easily and successfully doing this is this : pull out the disposal bin .. put the wet diaper into the bin .. then push the bin back into its housing. Do NOT try to squeeze the wet diaper into the small opening intended for disposal of paper towels.

I could write-a-book. I won't. Not today at least. My next Hong Kong 14+ hour flight is coming up in mid-November.