www.incontinentsupport.org

Hope the medicines continue working for you, wish they had for me but the side effects where worse than the problem they were treating.

_________________
When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive - to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.

Marcus Aurelius

My experience is that coffee works better to stimulate your bladder than any other drug out there. I've been on them all- and I do mean all of them! Most do absolutely nothing, while others do nothing and give you bad side effects. A very few did improve my conditions just a little, but only for a short while before becoming ineffective again.

Gotta lay off the coffee though, caffeine makes me sleepy.

_________________
When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive - to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.

Marcus Aurelius

It's been another week. The Oxy seems to work (sorta). I've found that most of the urge symptoms have lessened and I seem to be going less often. That's great!
The down side is it doesn't seem to be fool proof. There's the odd times where I revert back to the old AAaahhhh GOTTA GO! It's a relief to not go thru this hourly but that makes for some SURPRISE! moments. So if I'm out, I pad up. The last time out I was good till I ended up in the hospital ER unexpectedly. I felt great till on the way home and my old URGE friend visited. Thankfully I was padded.
The doc said we can up the dose if Oxy showed some improvement. So, we'll be discussing the possibility. So far so good.
The night time issues aren't so good though. The drowsiness from Oxy plus the effect of the drugs I take have compounded the night issues. The good news is I'm not waking up and sleep better than ever.
Diapers? Status quo. Dry times, greatly improved during the day and that's where I counts the most.

I guess if it helps with the urges then all is not lost, though I think I speak for most people on the board see you when I say that we have almost universally not had great luck with medications and again most people here feel that if it is not going to get you out of diapers then why bother taking it? For me all I ended up with was side effects with no improvement and it was not going to get me out of diapers so I figured I'd not spend the insurance money frivolously on pills when diapers were doing a better job of helping me out.

@Ted: "The last time out I was good till I ended up in the hospital ER unexpectedly."

Wait, ER? I hope that you're okay now?

_________________
When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive - to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.

Marcus Aurelius

Hello Porkchop, Yeah I was in the ER sunday. Nothing too serious broken arm from skiing oopsie. I don't recover from face plants at 20 miles per hour as I used to evidently.

Hello PB&J32, I have a suspicion that The Oxy is going to be a fail for me as well. I want to see the treatment thru though. I do see improvements but with the necessity of having to still wear diapers due to the remaining accidents, I don't know that the treatment is worthwhile. From what I've read, an incontinence treatment that improves the symptoms 45% or more is considered a success. So that means if I wet my pants only 45 times out of a possible 100, I'm a success story. What the heck is that???


I'm beginning to see my incontinence more as perception problem than a health issue. My tests show that everything is cool health wise and my bladder is just having fun with me. A brother and two sisters deal with the same problems. They're fortunate in that they haven't needed protection yet. (they must be able to run to the toilet faster than me)

When my wife and I discuss my incontinence she kinda rolls her eyes and tells me to get over myself. Nobody cares. I've told her it would be different if it were her. Her reply is she'd be grateful that was the only problem she had. She understands my reluctance to chase the myriad treatments and still coming up with no cure. She also understands the financial burden chasing a "cure" creates. Especially when a cure means wet pants 45% of the time. As I become less stressed about being incontinent, I've fessed up to my close friends and family. They all know now. Nobody laughs, insults, or treats me any differently. If anything I get the feeling that it's "thank god it's you and not me". But that's the general feeling with all health problems.

So, I'm looking at the possibility of accepting that I'm incontinent. Accept that I'll be wearing diapers. Accepting that it creates problems that I haven't had to deal with in the past. I'm considering getting over the embarrassment that wearing diapers presents (that ones gonna be tough) .
So far the only problems I've really encountered has been an increase in personal hygiene time. So what. I have to admit that getting over myself will be the biggest problem the whole incontinence thing presents. As I work thru the drug treatment, it's giving me time to adjust to the solution of just wearing diapers.

I do feel like this attitude is a cop out though. That I should be trying every avenue and option that's out there. Anything less and I'm just lazy. The problem is, I'm just getting tired of fighting this battle. It's getting quickly to the point that wearing a diaper just isn't that bad or that important. I hope to bring up this issue when I see the doctor. That if the drugs don't work, I'll just manage the problem. From what I've seen here, even with an incontinence solution, you still have a huge management issue.

Thanks everyone for your input and having a place to rant a bit, Ted

Ted, don't feel that way. It is not a cop out to forgo an attempt with pills that most likely won't work any ways. Plus, I found out the hard way that even if they do help 45%, your body will adapt to them and sooner or later they won't work at all. When you think about it, there really is no point in putting yourself through that in the first place.

My urologist is pushing for mirabegron. At first I was put on detrusol, which didn't help much if not at all, besides giving me blurred vision, headaches, dry mouth and in general feeling weird.
I have read from numerous sources, that mirabegron basically have the same sideeffects but costs more than double of Detrusol, so it makes great sense to me that my urologist is pushing for this new "wonder" med.

Anyway I have decided to give in and give mirabegron a try - and if it gives me sideeffects I'll tell my doctor to just stuff the medication up somewhere the sun never shines. And that I'll deal with the incontinence my way.

I have my wifes full support on this.