Tarlton wrote:
Given my age and the tendency for people to judge clergy as perverts, I would be terrified of my incontinence being seen as a fetish given many people don’t know struggles many of us have with catheters, drug combinations, or ... not getting surgery.
I had not considered that problem for member of the clergry. I don't know your age buy my issued started getting bad at 22. Indeed, my worst problems were 23-27 or so,
In my case, I don't think anyone thought it was a fetish when I was young (I don't think most of us had heard about that sort of thing; and at this point I was trying pads or paper towels in my underwear and just changing clothes a lot.. But I did have people in Student Health tell me that my problems were caused by me mentally, that either the cause of my constant diarrhea was due to stress or some subconscious need to be sick where somehow unknown to my conscious brain I was secretly making myself sick because some mental illness wanted me to be that way.
Of course, they hadn't done any tests at that point. It was easier to come to the dime-store-psychology answer like Sydney Freedman from MASH.
But being judged so harshly scared me away and I didn't mention it again for several years. Meanwhile I had gone though periods of my worst illness, malnutrition and massive hair loss. My grades suffered and I ended up going back for a second undergraduate worried my grades were too low for the highly competitive graduate programs I was looking at.
I hope your problems have a bright side in helping you care for others. At least something positive would come out of it.