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Whoa! 12 cups? No wonder you were having bladder irritation problems. Coffee is a known irritant, and that much is nit good.

It's nice to see doctors and nurses getting back to actually talking to patients too. It takes longer, but as you've found it can save a lot if useless hassle and meds down the line.

Ps. On a side note. I've found pepermint leaves tea is moderately ok in helping you wake up in the morning. Not as good as caffine, but a possible replacement for you.

Hi Drew

Ok thats a lot of Coffee
Glad your appointment went well and she didn't may you stressed about going in with a pad

That is a lot of coffee. Typically I drink three eight oz. mugs each day. My urologist just smiles and shakes his head. Still, it is a bladder irritant, so live and learn.

12 cups a day is a lot. However since the problems started I've reduced down to 2 cups and it's made no difference.
I can't cut it out completely, but I will reduce to one cup a day.

my dad used to literally put away 20 cups a day.

It probably prolonged his life. He was likely self medicating his congestive heart failure without even knowing it as coffee is a diuretic.

I have found that 1-2 cups of black tea does not make much of a difference either way. On the other hand, 4 cups of black tea makes everything worse.

An update..

Since I had that last appointment, I've cut down to one small cup of coffee first thing in the morning and a maximum of 4 cups of decaff coffee a day. The rest of the day I drink water. I've been doing the exercises they gave me too.
However, this has made no difference to my incontinence problems. I'm still suffering the same problems at the same fequency.

I had a letter through from the clinic yesterday, I've got to go back next month and see them again for the promised follow up. Will be interesting to see what they suggest next, I suspect it'll be the full work up....

If you do get a full workup, brace yourself. Although it is as embarrassing as you would guess it is, the staff see this every day they come to work.

Good luck and report back when you can.

So,
Last week I saw the nurse again. She did the same tests as before (flow rate and bladder ultrasound), asked a few questions then said she'd speak to the consultant and let me know.

Had a call the next day from the nurse to say she'd spoken to the consultant and they didn't feel that the full work up was necessary now, but they were going to start me on a new drug (I missed the name). Hopefully I should get the script from my GP today to start the meds.

I also asked about getting assistance with the provision of pads and my GP is going to call me to talk it through. Problem is he's a useless GP so I'm expecting an argument with him. We will see.

So I had a call last night from the GP who couldn't have sounded less interested if he'd tried.
He's sorting the script for the new meds for me and he's going to refer me to the Adult Community Health Team to see if they can give help with the provision of pads.