My Road to Incontinence

[wolfpup2008]

Tipping my hat to several others that have taken the time and made the effort to chronicle their road to incontinence here (BlakeJordan, mahleedl and many others), I want to give back to the community. I want to do my part in describing what works and what doesn't, what comes up during this journey, how much I am able to make progress and stay committed etc. This will be a fits-and-starts endeavor due to a very busy life and many responsibilities I have therein. So please accept my apologies in advance for the irregularity of my updates.

[Guest fakename7]

There’s also an element of control. As I am very much in control of so many parts of my life, I strongly long for a mechanism that causes me to not have control over some key area of my life in a debilitating and definitive way. Incontinence is that mechanism. I experience it as a form of body modification.

[Frink]

[incondl]

Wolfpup, Rather than concentrating on staying relaxed you should concentrate on a timed changing time & making sure your bladder always stays empty & getting that diaper full. I am urinary incontinent & need to change at a required time or take the chance of leaks or just being uncomfortable. I also have very little bowel control so unless I'm near a bathroom rather than find one quick I just go. Happens 2-3 time per day for me but I constantly leak unless sitting & as soon as I stand I pour. Needless to say I stand a lot. Much easier to control a constant dribble than a flood. I'm no expert in the wanting to become incontinent department but I am in the constant wetting. Everybody says relax the muscles & you will at some point get to where you want to be. I say work on constantly filling your diaper. Over time that will become second nature. You will lose capacity and you will no longer think about what you are doing except making sure you reserve the time to clean up & change. Use a high quality diaper with a high quality booster pad. Use plastic or some time of covering over the diaper just in case. Use "onsies" to keep everything in place and make that a ritual. While you may never really become incontinent like me you very well may become very comfortable with just going anytime & anywhere. Don't stick things in yourself to get instant satisfaction as the risk is not worth the reward. Good luck!!

[wolfpup2008]

Thanks, incondl.

I wonder whether the two are really one and the same:

* keeping things relaxed so as to leak constantly and to reduce bladder capacity,

* pee frequently so as to relax bladder capacity and become urge incontinent.

I think of catheters as a shortcut to reduced bladder capacity. (besides the kink aspect)

I'd love it if there was a way to cause bladder irritation to create symptoms similar to those of OAB.

[incondl]

They very well be one in the same but from a different perspective I guess. I get a kick out of reading all the different ways people try to achieve the goal. Maybe they work. Maybe they don't. I'm not sure & I won't judge it. People want a lot of different things for a lot of different reasons. While what one person wants may not suit me it'll suit you just fine. That's what makes everyone different I guess.

[mahleedl]

Reading BabyBrian's accounts of his trials with urge incontinence, it certainly isn't what I would want.

[wolfpup2008]

Right, MDL. Thinking out loud, I am wondering how much I can achieve the conditioning you refer to, or how quickly. I do find myself letting go quite naturally at times, like in the middle if a customer presentation or while talking to my wife, only that two things concern me: Most of the time I still need to initiate urination with at least some degree of awareness, and the volume at which I start sensing the need to pee is fairly high (I measured between 3 and 6 oz).

What's the connection between these approaches and bladder spams?

[wolfpup2008]

Hi Frink.

For now I am the super user in the house, I control the firewalls and passwords. It won't be a problem until the kids know how to install a key logger without my noticing. I'd give it another 5 years.

Re incontinence and sports: it's not a problem when playing tennis or soccer or such. I use either a disposable diaper with a onesie or a cover so that it's held up and I minimize chafing, or I use a pair of washable incontinence briefs. They only hold between 100 and 300cc, but I don't pee a lot when sweating. When I go to the pool I simply wear a Cunningham clamp or I just go ahead and pee myself. If you choose the right kind of swim pants it's not very noticeable. It's more interesting when I go somewhere with friends and we have to change right there on the beach or in the parking lot of the ski resort. It takes a bit of planning. But I have resolved myself to the fact that those friends that are close enough to share a room with or change in front of are the people that I will have to be 'out' to about my incontinence.

And with regards to the kids, since I started to wear thick diapers to bed every night, there were a number of times when one of the kids crawled into bed with us ("bad dream") and snuggles right up against my diapered butt. So it's just a matter of time that they will start asking questions. It'll be interesting in a context where one of them is struggling with bedwetting himself.

[mahleedl]

What's the connection between these approaches and bladder spams?

[wolfpup2008]

Quick update:

Since last August my progress has been quite spotty. I had periods of continuous wearing, at times several weeks in length. I experimented with catheters and medication. Since last fall I have been wearing some form of protection 24/7, but at times I limited myself to pads that don't have enough capacity to take a real wetting. That has all changed in March: since March 8, 2014 I have been 24/7 and expect to continue as such. Yes, that means I got to celebrate my one month anniversary a few days ago. Yeh.

The first month of no-compromise wearing was easy: I have gained so much experience over the years with wearing at work, at home, around family, friends, when traveling, when exercising, when at the gym... that I know how to prepare and what to expect. Even a week in Hawaii with the kids went without a hitch. Even with my parents visiting I feel no need to change any of my diaper wearing and wetting behavior.

Yesterday I had the urodynamic study done that I had been avoiding since last summer. It may well be the most bizarre experience I have ever had (a physician using a laptop-based application to trigger the pumping of water into your bladder while asking me what I feel...), but I believe it went well. Observations included a high volume of residual urine, obstructed flow, a hypersensitive bladder. But I will have to wait with definitive results until next week when I meet with my urologist to go over the results.

More to come later.

[wolfpup2008]

A few observations:

• Over the last year my bladder has become much more sensitive: the amount of urine below which I don't feel a need to void has become very small. I estimate it to be on less than 50ml. I can confirm this by my observations during the urodynamic study and by measuring the residual urine when I play with catheters.
• I am using a phone app to track my voiding events and found that in a 24 hour period I urinate between 15 and 30 times.
• Concentrated urine triggers my bladder: if I don't drink a lot then I get myself into a state where I have a constant feeling of urgency but cannot pee.
• Caffeine, artificial sweetener, citrus and spiciness trigger my bladder: I have experimented with these. If I consume a combination of them I experience several hours of uncomfortable urgency.
• I no longer sleep through nights due to urinary urgency. At times I find myself waking up 5 times and more during one night. When that happens, I immediately pee and go back to sleep. Fortunately I have a very easy time to fall asleep. There have been a few situations where I don't fully recall going back to sleep after peeing, indicating that I might fall asleep before I finish peeing, but until the day when I no longer recall waking up during the night I will not claim success in this department.
• I only had one night time leak in the last two months.
• I had about five situations where my clothes go wet due to pinhole leaks in my diaper.
• With my wife I seem to have found a way for us to have sex where we start foreplay with my diaper on, and it only comes off when we are ready for intercourse. It goes back on right after we finish intercourse.

[Spargano]

Glad to hear of your steady progress and also your routine lifestyle acceptance. It is good to see your wife and you are able to enjoy intimacy.

Spargano

[wolfpup2008]

Thanks, Spargano.