Hey , It’s Carolyn, one of the co-founders of Snappy-Me panties. My purpose for this blog is to bring a little humor to the conversation of incontinence.
The first sign I ever had that I would be one of the millions of women worldwide to be gifted with incontinence, was after giving birth to my second child.
I had been home only days from giving birth and was feeling great; enjoying my little new bundle of cuteness when nature made her call!
To this day I can still vividly see this in live technicolor. I had simply peed, cleaned myself, and went to stand up to pull up my undies - when I felt it! As well as you feel that hit in the gut, or that one stiff single hair on your chin that all of a sudden you see when glancing out your side view mirror just as you’re pulling up next to that new man with the dreamy blue eyes you just met on Match.com.
As I fell back down on the bathroom toilet and slowly opened my legs to see what had fallen out of my body, hoping on hope I just hadn’t delivered another child, there it was a large gray round ball with purple veins hanging from my inner parts, just dangling there as I stared in awe trying to decide what extraordinary feat I had just accomplished. So, I did what every sound minded woman would do. I screamed for my husband, who came running in to see me sitting with eyes wide and legs open, and calmly said “there is something hanging out of me,” and him, being very concerned and compassionate replied, “GROSSS!!!!! CLOSE YOUR LEGS AND WHAT IS THAT?”
So, of course there was no other action to take but to go to the emergency room, (ok, we didn’t have urgent care back then). But with two small little ones at home, I had to call a friend, except it wasn’t for a chance to win millions – no, it was for a ride to the emergency room. Which, she happily accommodated me, only after about 5 minutes of uncontrolled laughter. Of course, the waiting room was packed. So, I slowly walked up to the Triage window hoping nothing rolled out of my pant leg. I leaned into the window to answer the question, “Why are you here?” I whispered in a very secretive voice, “something fell out from inside me”, which the Triage Nurse says in the loudest voice possible “something fell out of you, what fell out of you?” Well, by this time all ears in the room were listening as I quietly tried to explain my drama.
To my surprise, I found out this big-boned country girl from Arkansas, had very small petite innards. I know, can you believe it? Can we just not turn me inside out? Anyway, being pregnant was very hard on my inner petite self and that ugly ball hanging from me was my beautiful petite bladder! Yep, it had fallen!! At 28 years of age I was old! Although, I was very concerned my doctor was not, as this was something seen often as women age (50 – 70), but not 28.
So, I began my physical therapy to rebuild my bladder, two tampons for support of my petite bladder, and thousands of kegels daily! Yes, I recovered, and my drama ended, so I would like to say, but it reared its ugly head again when I turned 45.
At first, it was just having to run in the door straight to the bathroom or dribbling when I would laugh or sneeze. But, as I fought with my kegels, that cute petite bladder fought back with a vengeance.
Soon, I was mortified by wetting on my self at work, as I squirmed trying to get control enough to just make it to the bathroom; stopping often to appear as I was just casually hanging in the hall leaning on the wall as people passed from office to office. Thereafter, I found I was wearing colors that faded into the wall thinking I would appear just as another landscape picture as people passed by. I quickly worked out how to waddle and strike a pose without looking abnormal on my way to the ladies room.
But oh no, my petite bladder had the same competitive genes I came from (can you even believe that your bladder can be competitive)? Well, ladies I am here to tell you that these Bladders, they have a plan! They are on a mission to get even with us for every time we delayed going to the bathroom, just so we could watch that ending on Hallmark, even though we knew it well, we had to finally see the heroine and hero finally say it. Two weeks and they are in love and we just had to see that scene one more time. I mean its so beautiful! But no, our bladders are out to get us, for every time we just wanted to finish that last bite of raspberry caramel cheesecake before we made that run to the bathroom! And ladies, my bladder is the big Kahuna of this bladder conspiracy.
It was not long after that, I was happily hopping out of my car running late for an appointment with a client. As I hopped out, I heard a rush of water like the sound of a beautiful roaring river, as I turned to see the beauty of this river I felt drops falling on my shoes. To my horror, I looked down to see that this roaring river was no other then my raging bladder! I was in shock, the only winning factor I had was I was wearing a dress, so the stream flowed straight down, no valleys or little canals were made just a constant flow straight down. Well, I had a decision to make and make quickly, since I had just called my intended appointment to tell her I was right around the corner. Do I call back my client and tell her I wouldn’t be able to make that appointment? Maybe my car had become stuck in an unexpected flood! Or home had called and the dog had eaten my husband’s Power Point presentation due tomorrow and I had to help him get the dog to regurgitate it. Or, did I just take off the nylons, the undies, use the napkins in the glovebox and walk in and take that appointment like a professional? I’ll let you decide which you think I chose! But hint, my bladder didn’t win and that was the fastest presentation I ever did.….Part 2 coming!
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