sarahjane

Well, I'm not lying, I've been working longer than you have, and that's what it has always been for me. I know some small employers are exempt from providing insurance (at least in my state, you have to be pretty small to get away with it). But I would never work for a company that did not provide insurance. I would not even consider it. I would be amazed if it is legal anywhere for a company with that many employees, unless you're less than full time. If it is, I suggest you move on to a new job. Please don't tell me I am lying.

If you have full-time employment in the US your employer is obligated to provide some sort of coverage at a flat fee--the employer pays the majority. It typically ranges from $0-$40 month for a single person, more for families. My previous employer paid 100%, which was nice. I only had to come up with $10 copay for doctor's visits. My present employer offers a range of plans from free to $40 a month. I signed up to the most expensive one, but I also signed up for an additional employee health program that gives me a $30 credit per month. So my coverage is presently $120 per year, though I have to come up with 10% of all expenses with a $1500 annual cap. But I hit that annual limit in the first or second month, so from there everything is paid for the year You generally only have to self-pay for insurance if you are self-employed. A lot of self-employed groups (farmers, etc) band together and do a group insurance purchase to offset the fees.

As another poster mentioned, keep drinking lots of water, both because of the UTI and the antibiotics. Ciprofloxacin is a really nasty drug. Not as bad as the one I am on (which causes cancer among other things), but it's way up there. Don't just stop taking it, that's even worse. But keep a close eye on things and be prepared to call your doctor.

Because you stressed (in italics) "whatever the reason", which suggests the reason may be other than a valid one. Also, you followed that with an emoticon in sunglasses with a wry smile, as if you were suggesting you were hiding something. I've dealt with fake patients. A woman came in through the ER, complaining of pelvic pain. Over and over about her pelvic pain, wanted an exam. The did an x-ray first, saw the soft-tissue shadow a penis clear as day on the film. She just wanted to be examined and "found out" as a transvestite or transsexual or whatever he/she/it was. No medical problems found. Just wanted to see what would happen when some unsuspecting nurse pulled up the gown and freaked out. Same with other posters here who have bragged about going to the MD's office in their diapers to be "caught", or in an attempt to get a nurse to "change them", as if a nurse is some sort of sex industry worker. So that's what your wry-smile and italic post said to me. I have little patience for "patients" who clog the system. Actually, there is a bill. It is your taxes. Nothing is free. In the US, the employer pays the majority of the health insurance costs with the employee paying a smaller charge (mine is now down to $10/month, not bad considering my medication costs nearly $200 per day). In Canada, the full burden is shifted to the employee in their taxes. That does help when you have evil employers who cheat the system, like Wal-Mart, who in the US structures it's employment so carefully to force citizens onto welfare and public assistance for their health care, so I get to pay for the health care they refuse to provide to their employees. I know all about medical systems all over the world. Every one has its problems. The medication I am on is highly restricted in Canada, Australia and the UK because they don't want to have to pay for it. In the US, I can get it because the FDA does not pay the bills, so they authorized it and now the insurance companies have to deal with it. I know a person in New Zealand who cannot get her birth control drugs, which she needs to control massive problems with bleeding. The birth control she needs (for various reasons due to her other health conditions, others do not work) is not available there. The government has to provide all approved medications, so if something is too expensive, they simply don't approve it--even if you offer to pay for it yourself, you can't have it. She has to fly to Australia and pay with her own money to get the implants done. The system in the US is fine if you've got a good job or have no job at all. If you're an unemployed illegal immigrant, you're golden! The raw deal is if you are one of the working poor with a low-end job. I was in that spot through school, I know all about it. The problems with socialized medicine are also long. I recall (now this has been 15 years), in my city we had a dozen MRI scanners, but there was only one in all of Toronto, a much larger city! An emergency MRI was a 45 day wait, and worried Canadian patients were traveling to Michigan to get scans done because they would rather pay for an MRI than die for free. The Canadian government later started paying the fees for patients to be seen in the US, which is kind-of funny since US patients want to buy drugs in Canada. I had a very interesting conversation with a German medical student who was studying the US system in order to improve their system, something that had me slack-jawed. But it turned out, they had a whole series of their own problems. Yes, Michael Moore does a good job of presenting his main viewpoint of "everything sucks in the US and always will". Very popular in Canada and among the self-flagellating University crowd here. Of course, Michael Moore's very own company owns stock in US-based drug and medical equipment giants like Eli Lilly, Boston Scientific, Pfizer, Genzyme and Becton Dickenson, plus defense contractors Loral, Boeing and Honeywell. Plus the massive energy/defense contractors Halliburton and Williams...McDonalds, oil drillng company Schlumberger, Conoco, Pepsi, etc. All the things he complains about. See pages 17-19. 2000 tax return, 2001 tax return, 2002 tax return. I guess it is just fine to make money off those industries as long as you complain about them. I did read what you wrote in the cited message, and I hope you see my viewpoint. I have become very jaded here lately, as the fetish crowd has basically destroyed every single online incontinence site. I'm just sick of it all. That's why I rarely post anymore. I am so embittered towards them all that I am starting to lash out like them. You become what you hate. Most of the users here are nice, but the bad ones are really bad. But I rarely feel good anymore--I'm up in the middle of the night because I am in massive pain, but narcotics steal my ability to function, and the other drugs don't work anymore. I have two choices: live in pain or live in a fog. For now, I have chosen the pain. But it limits my patience with people who deliberately abuse others for their own pleasure. I though that as they have 95% of this site for their needs, they might leave this corner alone, but they don't. They gain their pleasure from making other people uncomfortable.

Note that at least half of the ones you listed sell the just Gabby's product. The text "outer layer of Oxford Nylon which helps prevent the seepage of stool into the water. The inner layer is 100% cotton flannelette for comfort and durability" is straight from Gabby's boilerplate posting. I ordered mine from acd.com and they were Gabby's. Work fine, though I don't swim when I am having leakage problems so they are just an "emergency backup".

I should add that I don't mean to minimize that symptom, but given the symptoms as you have presented them, incontinence sounds like the end result of a more serious problem that can probably be easily treated. If left untreated, it could lead to far more significant damage.

They may have to give them another position, but I can see not having a person with fecal incontinence work as a lifeguard. You could have them render first aid, etc. But if someone has chronic fecal incontinence--unless it can be contained--a job which requires you to be ready to leap into a swimming pool with zero notice is not a good fit. Just as you can be denied a job working in a laboratory or clean room if you suffer from inadequate respiration. Remember, if that lifeguard jumps in and his diaper slips off--contaminating the pool--they not only have to drain, clean, and refill the entire pool (closure of 72 hours as I recall), but they are also liable to give everyone tests for fecal-borne diseases. Plus lawsuits for hiring an employee at a high risk of a fecal accident. There is a lot of liability issues. And what if the lifeguard, knowing he has just soiled himself and will leak, hesitates to jump in until he sees if a victim is in real trouble and the swimmer drowns? In the US, at least, exceptions to the ADA for people whose disability prevents them from doing a job. I don't want my lifeguard to have CP, be wheelchair-bound, have hepatitis, et cetera, either. I don't know about the EU. The probably have to hire them and then hire a helper to actually do their job.

Do you think it is really fair for you to clog up the healthcare system faking medical problems (which you suggest is what you are doing with your post) just to show off the fact that you wear diapers, when other people with serious problems have to wait weeks or months to be seen with serious health issues?

There is something wrong. It sounds like some issue with your bladder; inadequate emptying or a neuromuscular problem or something. This could lead to kidney problems. You need to see a doctor about this. I would not feel comfortable until you had been at least seen by a urologist, perhaps a nephrologist. This could be serious if you don't deal with it. Incontinence is a pain, but letting a problem lead to kidney disease is a nightmare. Yeah, you can use incontinent products, but that's just treating a symptom. You have got to get this worked up, I'm serious. There are few decent online resources anymore, as they have all been ruined by diaper-fetish users. I think the really bad users are in the minority, but they are very active (probably due to lack of a decent job or a girlfriend (they are basically all biologically male) I imagine you'll get a dozen posts here about how fortunate you are to be having serious health problems. Ignore them. I've given up on all online resources except for one hidden one I will not mention here. Please, get this looked at. I may not be back here to check with you.

I might add, that to be fair that is a great statement and normally I would applaud it. Have you ever found a lot of spiders in your house? When I find them, I normally take them outside and let them go. Not a big fan of spiders, but they deserve the right to live and do their spider-thing. But sometimes, I've found a lot of them. To the point that I am trapping and releasing 4-5 big ones a day...a lot of spiders around this area for some reason. It gets to the point after a few days you just want to start smashing the damn things. And that is the way it has gotten with a few people like "diapersallways" and a few others. One could argue, that when I let them bait me I am dropping down to their level. There would be some truth to that. But they keep creeping back in like the spiders, and I get so annoyed I want to smash them. That's why at the end of my post, I said (and you quoted): a case which I have already made and won't bother with again. Which is, as I read it, what you are suggesting I do.

Because users like "diapersallways" seriously angered me in another post. If he wants to keep pushing my buttons, that's his problem. I have no patience for that stuff anymore. I used to, but it has been burned out. If your CD keeps skipping on the same song, after a while you learn to hate that song. I tried to be super-understanding for years, and now I've just had my fill of it. I'm tired of the same non-incontinent users posting over and over about how they "know" they will love being permanently incontinent. I know how they "know" this, but they claim some special ability to have such foresight. And even though (or perhaps because) they know this upsets people, they keep going over and over it again like a broken record. I'm sick of cocky users going on-and-on about how they totally understand something they never experienced, so I decided to take their attitude and point it back at them. I'll be cocky and rude and shoot down whatever they say. Perhaps they'll get the point. I have to figure either they want to upset people, or are too stupid to get the point. It's kinda funny how "diapersallways" has a snowboarding image in his posts, as the snowboarding crowd is filled (though not exclusively) with cocky young males who think they know everything and think nothing about destroying other peoples property, stealing power from cabins, etc...as long as they get what they want. Kinda the same personality. The "screw you, I do whatever I want" theory of life. That also hurts things for decent snowboarders, who get marked by the stigma of an 18 year old male knocking kids over and shouting profanity.

A reminder how fragile we all are. I was sick as a child, then came-and-went for years. I thought it was all behind me until it came back like a bad dream when I was 19. I've already had one bad end-of-life scare, for a while I changed and lived more. I've fallen back into my bad habits of working too hard. I need to change that and enjoy what I have got while I still can.

Wow, what an assh*le.

Wow....no wonder you're sensitive to stimulation and/or changes in stimulation. I had to get out my textbooks and look some of those up. You hid the weird-neromuscular-problems jackpot. Normally I would try to balance that last statement of mine with something hopeful or upbeat like "well, that type of MD has a slow progression, so it could be worse", but you've got enough going on that I can't think of anything bright to say. You know how it is. Whenever I am feeling down about my problems, I need only turn around and find someone who has it worse than I do. Not much helpful I can say. But taping a condom cath to the end of your glans might send you into sensory overload! I'm not surprised you don't like it. How did you end up with Erb-Duchenne Paralysis? If it is not too personal of question...did you tear out your Brachial Plexus, or was it something that happened when/before you were born? Damage to the brachial plexus is a major fear of mine. I worked on a patient who hit a tree skiing and ripped his right out. He was a senior commercial pilot until that day. I also had a friend whose was ruined by radiation.

And when I was that age, I thought I was a lot wiser than I was. It's all part of the procedure. Learning how little I knew was one of the most valuable things I ever learned. In my experience (I taught for several years when I was a grad student), the sooner one realizes that...the more they learn. I wish I had understood my lack-of-wisdom five years earlier!

You are incorrect. I know the age he was at which he joined as well as the date that data was collected, and based on multiple IQ measurements over several years, I'm 1.3-1.6x smarter of the average member of the population. That's why I said "probably" on the second-part. Meaning there is a significant probability. But that's just math. And frankly, I think I've been getting dumber the last decade or so, so I tend to believe it's lower number now (the 150-160 measurements were when I was 10). Not that it's good for anything anyway. In reality, I know he does not know what he is talking about because he is not old enough to have acquired the wisdom for it. Same case I made for you, though you have also demonstrated independently that you're a fool. Some fools are intelligent, as ones knowledge is really determined by the product of one's intelligence and wisdom. People of average or even below-average intelligence who have great wisdom can therefore be more knowledgeable than a person of high intelligence who has no wisdom. I can introduce you to a bunch of PhD's that are idiots. In your case, you have demonstrated to me in several ways that you are a fool, a case which I have already made and won't bother with again. Your very posting in the medical forum tries my patience.

Ah. The wisdom of someone in their early 20s. Or lack thereof. I'm 1.8x your age and probably 1.3x as smart and even I don't know how I will feel about something like that until it happens.

(numbers added by me) 1. No. Sometimes I used to get a bit of a "buzz" over the act of buying the diapers, going back to when I was first sick and could not get a diagnosis. Buying them felt dirty, and I was ashamed. I would drive to another city and purchase them in the middle of the night. I would be bright red and frequently abandon my cart as I did not have the courage to go to checkout, and go back to using 3-4 maxi pads all along the back of my underwear and carrying spare pants at all times. It's hard when you are young, sick and alone. I would get a real "high" when I would manage to get them all smuggled into my dorm room (massive Attends packages) a few at a time. Years later, every once in a while I would suddenly get a bit of that "rush" again when I managed to buy a package in a store, but that was just a response to my shame fading. By the time I got a real diagnosis, I did not get it anymore. Now I generally mail-order anyway. 2. Yes. Totally screwed all three up. I nearly fainted at my graduation from blood loss (same condition that causes my incontinence). It has badly screwed up my relationships by causing me to start soiling my pants just as I hit the age where people tend to become sexually active. I got out of my relationships and pulled back for fear I would be found out; it took me years to get a diagnosis. The disease did a lot of the damage to my school, but so did the incontinence. Having to leave the classroom three times during an Organic Chemistry final; I missed about 25% of the test time and the TA finally followed me intp the bathroom, thinking I was cheating (understandable). As I got sick, my grades would drop. I had to change my clothes several times at work some days for accidents; thankfully, we had private showers I could sneak in and use. I had a few accidents at school. One left me stranded in a restroom for an hour, trying to figure out what to do. Another time I soiled my sheets and did not realize it. I pulled the sheets that morning in the dark and put them out (in the public hallway) for laundry pickup. It was not until I came home for lunch that I saw the big stain and goo on the fitted sheet still in the pile outside my door, then rushed in and found it all over the bottom of my comforter. I wondered how many people noticed. I still worry about that. Another time I was watching a film in class and had a small accident just as it started. It was a short film, but I spent the whole time feeling it creeping out through my pants and wondering how I was going to deal with it when the film ended. The way that room worked, we were in an auditorium with a shared desk and I could not get up without bothering everyone else. So I had to wait until the film ended. The last one I can think of...I was on the verge of losing control and was in the front-center of a small lecture hall with the professor walking up and down right in front of me. I waited until I thought I was going to die, then finally had to pack up and excuse myself right in the middle of her class. Thankfully, she mentioned that I did not look well at all, so I felt a little less bad. Made it 70% of the way to the restroom, then I had to go down the stairs. At the first step I lost control and had total watery diarrhea down both legs, then made it to the bathroom just in time to vomit in the trash can. Again, I had to hide in the bathroom until my class left the building, as even with all the supplies I had, I was not prepared for an accident of that magnitude. I had to sneak out and find a way home with my soiled clothes. No, I did not have fun.

I totally understand not wanting to go around with a foley drain bag under your chair. Can't they five you a leg bag or something? Most of the patients I worked with just wore fleece "sweat pants" and they cover up the leg bag really well...mind you, with the amount of fluid I drink, I would need one on each leg if I had urinary incontinence! Sometimes, when my gut is working properly and I am "empty" anyway, so I know I won't have an accident, I'll take a shower and then go to bed without a diaper to give my skin a break. Plus, it's more comfortable without one. But it feels strange. I've been in diapers for >10 years now and not wearing something is really weird. Do you have any feeling below your waist? In any case, if the condom cath creeps you out, I think it is totally fair not to use it. But you might want to see if you can get used to it, to make it easy for your skin. I had one patient with three stool drain bags (same type of bed-hanging foley bag) and she was ambulatory and had to carry them around in a special purse she made. But the poor woman still had to have three clear vinyl hoses full of yellow-green liquid snaking out of her pants at some point.

It's the way he said it: Like those of us who don't have an ostomy are somehow not being cared for properly, or don't have a serious problem. Fecal incontinence is the number-one reason for admission to nursing homes. Actually, you offended me as well: The hell it is. How do you have "timed voiding" when you have chronic diarrhea and bleeding? If I could time things, I would not be incontinent, would I? I also cannot digest oil, so any fat/oil in my food goes right through, vegetable oils being the worst. The only way I could perhaps have a hope of this is if I flushed everything out in the morning with an enema and did not eat all day, but even then I would have blood, bile and mucus to deal with. How can one plan chronic diarrhea? I had an idiot doctor once who suggested bowel training. I refused to pay that bill--$185 for 10 minutes to suggest bowel training or a colostomy to manage my problem. Wrote a letter to the hospital about how inappropriate that was for someone with my disease, and I never heard back from them. So, that's what Lavender meant. I hope you see what I mean as well. I know you did not mean to offend, but from my standpoint, having had so many important events in my life ruined (or at least dented) by that problem, I don't like hearing that it is "easy" to have fecal as compared to urinary incontinence. With urinary incontinence, one can use a foley or (for males) a condom cath and be on your way, cured with a leg or belly-bag. At least they have options. All I have is an ostomy, a diaper or a cork. And the cork (Conveen Anal Plug) is not even approved in the US, and would not work with me anyway.

The proper spelling is odorless. Well, whomever wrote that article would flunk basic (University) physiology and/or organic chemistry. Salt has no odor. You're made of mainly 1% salty water. The only way salt could "cause odor" is if you consumed so much salt that it acted as a saline laxative and you passed contents of the upper-GI tract. That's a lot of salt. Enough to cause significant and immediate GI discomfort. People don't eat that much, unless they're heading in for a colonoscopy. A lot of the "alternative" literature is either weak or totally wrong on their science. And salt is only bad for you if you are consuming enough to have hypertension or you're in CHF. BTW, it's spelled diarrhea. After I posted I figured you would rip that statement apart, but I was too tired to go back and edit it. I should not have included that particular anecdote. In the end, that patient was not sick with a GI problem, but I forget the exact diagnosis. Anyone who eats highly spiced food will have feces that has a stronger smell. If you are eating that diet all the time, it literally gets to the point where you cannot smell it, but others can. That goes for about anything, including onions, garlic, curry, etc. I've had a lot of other peoples poo either on me or flying about the room, and as I worked in a University ER with a large Indian population, a lot of it was vegetarian poo. Still stinks. You can claim otherwise, but it's not true. Actually, I would suggest that any healthy diet for a hominid should include plenty of protein, and any protein diet will produce malodorous amine-compound breakdown components from the amino acids in the proteins that the person is digesting. So if you're restricting protein, you're not healthy. I don't care if it comes from cows or soybeans. And a lot of healthy food that would be in a proper vegan diet (at least as close as an animal who has spent >2M years as an omnivore can be a strict vegetarian (which is defined as something that consumes no animal protein, which you would call a "vegan") with a healthy diet) would produce gas and odor. It's spelled odor. The Oder is a Baltic river, but I would not be surprised if it stinks. Your statement was somewhat stronger than that. You said "I'm a vegan. As long as I'm not sick, I'm not all that stinky". That is an attempt to (1) show the superiority of your dietary-restriction choices to others who have not made those same choices, (2) attempt to claim that it is therefor appropriate for you to purposely sh*t yourself in public for your own pleasure, (3) suggest that anyone who is concerned about this behavior, the inconveniences to others and/or does not find that appropriate, is of lower moral character and is therefore not worthy to be speaking about the subject. The skat of herbivores does smell less, I agree. But humans are not herbivores. We lack the abilities to digest our food like a ruminant. We are omnivores and need to consume amino acids to survive. And even ruminant skat can smell if they have been eating strong-smelling plants. And vegan or not, your output is not going to be so odor-free that I cannot smell you wearing a diaper full of feces, which was your argument at the beginning of this discussion. I would also argue the droppings of Carnivores, who have an even more simple digestive system than ours, generally smells worse. But ours can smell much worse because of the spices we add to our foods. Though the worst I have smelled is a vampire bat, which is not quite as bad as a human with a GI bleed. Regarding points 1 and 3, the vegetarian movement has become basically a religion. You have a set of core beliefs that are taken as faith, and anyone who questions the faith is dismissed as a heretic, and their research is dismissed. It's a proselytizing religion, with members trying to recruit others either based on fear ("you'll die if you eat meat", "you're murdering innocent cows") or through guilt/morals "I'm so much better than you because I am a vegetarian, so is that celebrity, and if you do what I do you'll be just like that guy from Hollywood"). It's like Christianity, where they will try threatening folks with the fear of hell or the basic guilt of pointing out you've not been seen in church lately It has it's fundamentalist group--The Vegans--who dismiss the normal practitioners of the religion as weak of moral character and chose the Righteous Path of more expensive food with funky cartoon labels that is therefore More Pure and free of Sin. Speaking of Sin, it's pretty clear. The great sin is to eat animal protein. From there, it's a sliding scale with a lot of lay practitioners applying their own morals to various things. Sounds like now someone has added Sodium Chloride, one of our main essential chemicals, to the list. And as always, they have their native sons they like to celebrate (Bob Barker) as well as those they never admit to (Adolph Hitler). They also lay claim to a lot of folks whose belief in the faith is shaky or highly questionable, or who only converted under pressure ("Weird Al" Yankovic). You even have Evil Spirits. Devils who try to turn people away from The Faith and towards Darkness. The evil food industry. Multinational corporations. And McDonalds, the spawn of Satan. Some Practitioners (like that PETA woman with diabetes on insulin) are allowed to buy indulgences and use animal products, yet still remain Pure because of their Greater Works. In any religion, when their faith is Tested by others making statements or asking hard questions, they fall back and fight for their beliefs, no matter how shaky they are. Some I've known have long lists, even three-ring binders in some cases, of arguments and "science" to back up their claims. Am I talking about Vegans, or Mormons? I can't tell. Same thing, in many ways. And they've both knocked on my door when I was away at school, trying to study for an exam. I'm not trying to convert you, I know that being a Vegan is mega-cool right now, and there is no way you would listen to an uncool-person line me. I'm just pointing out that your statement is (1) really rude, (2) untrue. And regarding point #2, as a person who suffers from chronic fecal incontinence, I do my best to avoid offending others and clean myself up as soon as possible. It's rude to go around with a load of sh*t in your pants when you don't need to...just because you don't smell it does not mean other people cannot. The "AB Lifestyle" is only fair to others when you don't involve them. It was the moral suggestion of your post (plus the crap science) that really offended me. BTW, I mentioned your quote to a friend of mine who is a science-minded vegan animal-rights nut, who buys only the most overpriced food products locally-made in our "freak district" and even he laughed.

Seems correct for me as well, given the circumstances. Dehydration is also dangerous. As long as you still use the toilet as normal when you can, I would doubt that this would result in any more incontinence than you already have.

This has been long-claimed for inflammatory bowel disease, which some people (including physicians) confuse with IBS. There may be some benefit, but it is outweighed by the risks. A 60 y/o RN with Ulcerative Colitis I know kept smoking to help with her IBD. She was just diagnosed with metastatic lung CA spread to her bones. Worse than the Ulcerative Colitis....

Okay, well you made the smart move by getting brave enough to call your doctor. I would consider the possibility of a UTI, a urinary tract infection. this is less likely as you are a male, but if it is possible that your urethra (tube in you penis) could have become contaminated inside with fecal material, this raises the odds quite a bit. I don't know the details of what happened to you, but hopefully it was not violent enough to cause any nerve damage or swelling that could be pressing on your nerves. Could also be lower-back damage or irritation in your lumbar-sacral areas at the back of your pelvis. Again, I don't know the nature of your assault, but that could be a factor if it was violent at all. Nobody should have to put up with that sort of horror, and I am not being cold...just my attempt to be detached and clinical for the purpose of this dialog. I have been manipulated and used and forced to go past my "no" point with someone, in a circumstance that has left me damaged for a number of years. I suspect mine was not as bad as yours, as I could have physically fought off my attacker, I submitted out of guilt to a skilled manipulator who left a long line of damaged people in (their) wake. (I keep my gender here a bit unclear on purpose.) A lot of these things will clear up on their own or with some MD help, but you do need a real doctor's opinion.

A+ grade from me for that reply. People like that make it harder for everyone here who acts decent. People called "sarah" are often sensible.