Dear Dr. Pat,
I am only 46 but I feel like one of those very old women in television ads for incontinence pads and Depends. It is almost summer and instead of shopping for a new bikini, I am buying long coverups for the pool and the beach. I developed frequency and urgency to urinate in the last year that is making my life miserable. Not only do I have an intense urge to urinate but if I don’t get to the bathroom quickly, then I begin to lose urine! I wear pads just in case and I don’t drink before going to the gym, getting into a car for a drive longer than 45 minutes or going out anywhere unless I know where the bathrooms are. I am urinating more at night which is interrupting my sleep. These symptoms seem to be getting worse and I think about how to avoid losing urine all the time.
My two children weighed less than seven pounds at birth and I had easy vaginal deliveries. My periods are slightly less regular than they were but otherwise normal. I do smoke and drink too many diet sodas but don’t have any other bad habits. I have become so anxious that I will have an accident during intercourse that I have been avoiding sex and blaming it on menopause.
My GP tested me for diabetes and bladder infections several times and these tests were normal. I don’t have blood in my urine on the office urine test. My gynecologist told me that I didn’t have stress incontinence, which causes loss of urine with coughing, laughing or sneezing, and she found no evidence of a dropped bladder from childbirth so she sent me to a urologist.
The urologist insisted that I needed a painful procedure to look into my bladder to make sure that I didn’t have bladder cancer or an inability to empty my bladder completely but I couldn’t tolerate the procedure. He was unwilling to treat me unless I had this procedure. Is it really necessary to make sure that I don’t have bladder cancer before prescribing some medication to help with these symptoms? What do these drugs that I have read about in my midnight Google searches actually do to prevent the urgency and frequency and loss of urine?
I have been too embarrassed to discuss this with my friends but wonder how common this is in someone my age? I can’t believe that I have this problem that my grandmother had in her 80s.
Barb
Add gravity to the basic factors causing stress incontinence.