www.incontinentsupport.org

I am wondering if anyone else has similar experiences. If so, how do you manage. I am 77 years old. I had my prostate removed 8 years ago. My incontinence is so unpredictable. I can go for quite some time with no symptoms that I should maybe pee. Then, it can come on suddenly and the urge and elimination almost occur simultaneously. I think, ok, today I can go without wearing a diaper, but usually "chicken" out. I have multiple other health issues...heart failure, peripheral neuropathy, and lumbar stenosis. These may exacerbate the unpredictable incontinence. Should I just suck it up, and wear diapers 24/7? I almost feel like I'm giving up. And, there is the cost of diapers! Have any others had these kinds of feelings, and if so how do you manage?

I do not see wearing diapers as giving up. Even though I sometimes have dry periods, and I use the toilet whenever I can, wearing diapers 24/7 is the accommodation I need to live my life with as little hassle as possible. If you can begin to understand that diapers are in the same category as eye glasses, hearing aids, walkers and wheelchairs, and should not be cause for chagrin, life will become easier. Good luck and report back when you can.

There is no stigma from wearing a diaper. Have you thought about using cloth diapers? They can be removed to use the toilet and if not needed they can be warn again. Yes the cost up front is more than disposable diapers however once used they can be washed and then used again. If you can sew the cost is much less. I took a disposable diaper and made a pattern, then made my own.

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RetiredRN

I had my prostate removed almost 4 years ago and now have what I would call somewhat predicable incontinence, but not so different from yours. Often I will have just a little bit of warning that I have to pee, which is in the form of a fairly small leak. At that point I have a few minutes to get to a bathroom and pee normally. However if I can't get to a bathroom soon enough my bladder will just empty slowly from that point on. The only good news here is my bladder is (or has become) very small so I am able to handle this situation with a decent pull-up with a Male Guard (non flow thru type) pad inside.

In a typical day I will go thru two pads and usually the pull-up will be dry. The great thing about this is that when out and about I can carry one or two pads discreetly in my pants pockets and can change out a pad practically anywhere in just a minute or less. Heck I even changed out a pad while filling my car with gas with nobody else close by. I reached in and pulled the wet pad out and had the new dry one in all in about 30 seconds. Of course if you do run out of pads you can always just use the pull-up so it's always there as a sort of back-up.

At night I will add a folded up 27"x27" cotton cloth to the pull-up with a Leakmaster PUL pant over all of that. I rarely leak at night but when I do I have a "peeing dream" and will have a full bladder release. However the set-up I just described handles it nicely and I've never had anything even leak into the PUL pant,

I forgot to mention that this may not work for you, and as all of us here know you will have to experiment a bit to find out what works for your particular situation. However I hope this has helped a bit.

Going without wearing a diaper can be a pretty worrying experience. When not in a diaper I often will be in a situation where I "think I feel something" but I'm not sure if I actually peed a little bit, or not. So I have to try to check, which is hard to do discreetly. And then I also end up going to the bathroom way before I really need to, partly because I worry that I might need to pee soon, and also partly because it's the only discreet way to really figure out how wet my underpants actually are (if at all).

The whole thing is a lot of work and it's a lot of stuff to have to keep in the back of my mind all the time. Wearing a diaper 24x7 means being able to go for long stretches of time (4 hours, 6 hours?) without even thinking about pee or where/when the next bathroom opportunity is going to be. For me, that is so, so very worth it. I can't tell you how to feel, but that's how I feel.

Best of luck. It sounds like you have a full plate with everything else, too.