www.incontinentsupport.org

I had my yearly urological physical yesterday and I always love the euphemisms the medical industry has come up with surrounding incontinence. My favorites are:
1) protection and briefs
The word diaper is like a cuss word. My doctor was reading off this long questionnaire to determine if my protection needs are being meet and to evaluate my philological well being in using protection. There was the standard how often does your protection leak to some more interesting questions when she got to the "users who use adult briefs" section that mirror discussions on the use of briefs mentioned on these boards.

2) social continence
At my physical a year ago the Continence Status choices were Continent, Partial Continence, Dependent Continence, Social Continence, and Incontinent. I was not Incontinent! I was Socially Continent. Only people who can't or have not found a way to hide their leakage from society were Incontinent. People who managed fine using absorbent products were socially continent.
At this office my status was Incontinent and my treatment was listed as social continence, so at least they were not trying to coax me that I was not incontinent

3) unwanted leakage
I noticed there has been a move away from accidents to unwanted leakage. I am not sure why they put the word unwanted in there.

Share if you have any that you like, are funny, or annoy you.

grover, i guess by unwanted leakage they mean when u dont intentonally went ur diaper. Apparently its well known that ppl who wear diaper sometimes use them out of convinenence. Which is pretty much guaranteed to make incontience worse if made habit. But, if a person has to wear protecition 24/7 anyway, be it diapers, pullups or some other pad, does it really make any difference how bad the incotinence is? You still need pads or u end up with wet pants or wet underwear. Using the diaper just makes sense if u know ur gonna be wet eventually anyway.

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"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

You are 100% dead on. I was actually surprised that one of the clinical guidelines for the prescription of adult briefs is "no benefit from toileting or patient may prefer urine containment but not toileting". She explained that is because briefs are too hard to take off and put on correctly and doing so fosters the growth of bacteria. Unlike pullups, briefs are considered multiple wetting aids, so if you take it off or let it ventilate to the air after using it just once early on your risk of UTI's skyrockets due to bacterial growth. Once you graduate from pullups to briefs the medical community no longer expects you to try to make it to the toilet.

what are you saying? that i should just use briefs and not bother peeing in the toilet? Because, i can use the bathroom. I have been using briefs instead of pullups because of the way pullups fit too loose and don't have adequate padding coverage. Though some of the pullups i tried tonight weren't bad. What should i do?

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"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

jgrover,

I never gave much thought to some of the things you've mention in your post like "no benefit from toileting.....", or "......the medical community no longer expects you to try to make it to the toilet". Your comments are very accurate and well described.

I have doc's prescription for diapers as a medical necessity. I can not think of one time any doc has ever asked me about trying to make it to the bathroom before the diaper got wet. In my situation, there is no benifit of using the toilet even if I could make it to the toliet in time because the diaper is going to get wet anyway, (I have urge incontinence). Additioanlly, anyone who has used diaposable diapers for very long also knows the tapes are NOT as easy to refasten as manufactures claim them to be. If you plan to use the same garment for protection after using the toilet the pullup is probably going to be the best protective garment for small voilds without multiple wettings.

Im pretty sure i have urge incontnence also.. but, i try to clench it when i can. But, sometimes even pinching it doesnt do any good; i still get wet. If it turns out my incontience is caused by something neuroligical, i probably will just use briefs 24/7, because theres no way it will get better.

_________________
"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,
Unfortunately none of us have a crystal ball. Most of us here have been through it all; the drugs, this and that procedure, only to still end up in diapers. Those drugs and procedures work but not for everybody and of course when you go to incontinence message boards it seems like they work for nobody. It is the reason we still visit these boards. There is also something to be said about going through the stages. If my doctor told me to just wear briefs and get used to it at my initial consultation I would have reported them to have their licence taken away. After you go through the barrage of stuff they can try and have it all fail to make you dry, you end up appreciating diapers a lot more and don't second guess your decision to use them 24/7 down the road.

well.. i did wear a pullup to work yesterday, and it didn't leak. In fact, i wore a pullup all day yesterday and didn't have to change it. Not sure if i was lucky, or if my incontinece is getting better. One thing i did differntly is when i thought i was about to leak, i tried clenching.. i think its helping. But, it may be that sometimes the urge comes on suddenly, and i cant clench. I also wore a pullup to my MRI. I was sweating bullets, hoping and praying i wouldnt wet myself while in the machine. I didn't. There may be some hope.

_________________
"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