www.incontinentsupport.org

Ok.. let me first confess that i haven't exactly been 100% faithful to my pelvic floor rehab regimen. I do the excersices when i can remember to. Howver, despite that, I have been pretty much dry..except for tonight. I noticed a small drop...then another drop..and promptly went to my car to grab a brief that i have in the backseat... and when i went to the bathroom later.. it wasn't soaked..but it wasnt completly dry either. Ok, ok, ive been a bad boy and not doing my pt.. but this is first time this has happened..and I plan to catch up on the excersices.. another thing that is probabably contributing to it is constipation. I noticed that i was constipated last night and today... and i can't remember when the last time that happened was. So.. maybe an enema will do the trick..in any case, i plan to do a bowel cleansing, do a catch up daily therapy regimen, and wear protection in public for a week.. and if it doesnt clear up...then say something to to the doctor and my parents.. dont want to alarm them unnecessarily...

peace out!

_________________
"We cannot do great things. We can only do small things with great love" Mother Teresa

"THERE ARE FOUR LIGHTS!" - Captain Picard from Chain of Command, Part II

sociologygeek,

Hopefully, this will be an exceptional event. However, resuming your pelvic floor exercises as soon as possible should be a priority. Keeping your GI system under control must be another priority, because both constipation and diarrhea can aggravate incontinence. Keep us informed.

Sociologygeek,

You are not alone in his. When I let my Kegel exercises lapse I sometimes pay the price in terms of bowel incontinence.

I try to do my Kegels every day. Unfortunately as that is not the most exciting portion of my day, I often forget. However, I have learned that I can do these exercises during my morning walks, during the lost time when driving my car, or while watching tv!

--John

Ok, after I made that last post, I took that enema and started doing kegels. Both saturday and sunday were drip free.. but now on both monday night and tuesaday during the day.. there has been incedences. I put on a brief monday night and am glad I did. I started having spurts.. and at one point i decedid to stop clenching and let myself go... I don't know what to do.. I mean I tried my hardest to keep up with the program. I should have done it more, I admit, but for a while i was dry without doing them daily. In any event, I'm glad i deceided to keep protection around. One possiblilty is that ive recently started drinking powerade at work to keep up my energy when i havent slept during the day.. maybe that is a factor. I also havent been looking at the diet regimen. I'm easily distracted by nature, but im doing my best. Good thing I have at least 4 bags of attends from that last shipment..i might need to start using them again..oh well..

_________________
"We cannot do great things. We can only do small things with great love" Mother Teresa

"THERE ARE FOUR LIGHTS!" - Captain Picard from Chain of Command, Part II

Sociologygeek,

It sounds like you are really working hard at this! Don't knock yourself up over a few accidents. There are so many different factors that affect bowel incontinence that it is difficult to sort them all out. Stressing ourselves out over our incontinence is difficult not to do, but is counterproductive.

Re the enemas, it takes practice to get the body and mind used to them and to work out the small things that help it go smoothly. Below is a link to copies of my paper on the use of enemas to control fecal incontinence on Dropbox, in .pdf format. Just copy the URL and past it into your address window.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/567 ... 0AUG14.pdf

If you can't read my paper on enemas in Adobe Acrobat format, let me know and I will post another version in .rtf format.

I have provided a copy of the paper to Schoppy but don't know whether he has had the time to read it yet.

Re the Kegel exercises, how many are you doing in a day? How long do you maintain the contraction? How many days a week? Please note that progress from Kegel exercises can be very, very slow. Typically it may require weeks to months to see significant progress. That is frustrating for those of us who need quick results. It is important to remain focused on the long-term benefits.

--John

JD, thanks for the input. However, my problems have been urine in nature, not bowel. The only thing going on with the bowel is consitapation, which has been known to aggravate my bladder, hence the urine incon, hence the need for bowel cleansing/fiber.. I have to think emotional stress is playing a factor, because it started the very night at work that i found out a co-couneslor from last summer died unexpectedly at age 23... now, i wasnt distraught, but was in mild shock..maybe thats doin somethin. As far as the kegels, I'm going with the answer I give my dentist when they ask me how often i brush and floss... when i remember to. Yes, i realize oral hygine is important, and frequent brushing prevents cavities, but I find id diffficult to establish that good habit...

Now im feeling somewhat guilty and like its my fault that this is starting up again because I didnt do the kegles as often as i can..it does remind me of the first time that i started having problems..i someowhat suspected drinking lots of alcohol to blame , and oh i had guilt and self blame over that...

as far as your statement that progress with kegles come slowly, well for me, it was well within a few weeks that i started seeing results.. I started the program and found the distracition and squeeze techinque helpeful..

I'm somewhat disappointed that this is recurring, but i'm not totally beside myself.. I'm just really glad i happened to have a bag of attends in the back of my car right when i needed them. Even if I do get dry again, i wont get rid of the stockpile until im dry for at least a year.

_________________
"We cannot do great things. We can only do small things with great love" Mother Teresa

"THERE ARE FOUR LIGHTS!" - Captain Picard from Chain of Command, Part II

Sociologygeek,

Don't rush the kegles. I have read in several places that if they are done too much, it can be counterproductive. It stresses out the pelvic floor muscles and tires them out.
I will see if I can find one of the web articles I found and post a link here.

Rope

Rope,

Re doing too many Kegel exercises, I believe that those instances were where the people were doing many hundreds of repetitions per day and just did not tolerate it well. In some cases there were other underlying medical or physical problems which contraindicated starting a Kegel exercise program.

Dr. Arthur Kegel, for whom Kegel exercises are named, had his patients performing hundreds of exercises per day (about 300, if I recall correctly) will no ill results. Many clinics and physicians today have programs in which the patient begins with large numbers of daily repetitions, broken up into two or three sets performed during the day. This number is reduced to a maintenance level after substantial progress is achieved. My program began with about 200 per day. My maintenance program, which I admit I sometimes forget to do, is about 60 per day. Some others do less. As I indicated in a previous post, many of my Kegels are performed somewhat casually while doing other things like walking, driving, or watching t.v.

My serious Kegel exercises include more advanced exercises where Kegels are performed while the legs deliberately are separated in various postures, e.g., one straight and one knee-chest. I also perform dynamic Kegels with the legs in motion. The intent is to both strengthen the pelvic floor and anal sphincter muscles in the specific real-world postures and situations in which many bowel accidents often occur and when it is most difficult to maintain a contraction of the sphincter muscles (think of situations where you are walking up stairs or getting up out of the bath tub). As I use daily enemas to control my bowel incontinence, it always is a challenge for me both to hold in the soapy enema for the recommended period and not seriously leak when getting up off the floor and moving to the toilet. The more advanced Kegel exercises have significantly improved my ability in this regard and make it very easy for me to see the results.

IMHO, the bottom line is that frequent performance of the Kegel exercises, and doing them correctly, is more important than large numbers of repetitions.

Doing the exercises correctly can be a little more difficult that would at first appear. I thought I was doing the pelvic floor exercises correctly, and I was not doing badly with just the sphincter muscles, but I had a lot to learn. To ensure that I was performing trans-abdominal exercises with the correct muscles I not only was monitored electronically with external surface patches, but even with the. therapist inserting a gloved finger into the anus while I was performing the Kegel exercises to confirm that the correct muscles were being contracted! Very embarrassing (although totally professional), but a lesson I shall never forget.

The general Kegel exercises help with both urinary and bowel incontinence. Personally, I found that I needed to practice longer-duration Kegel exercises to achieve optimal results for bowel incontinence (think of how long a bowel spasm can last).

--John