Progress

Wed: Started trying what I believe to be are elevator kegels.

Thurs & Fri: Noticed improvement.

Saturday: Inspired by Salty Clark's home trials, I discovered I had a gram scale in the house and I started my own trial. I carefully weighed my pads on Saturday (6 pads) and Sunday (5 pads). All of them were light - and Sunday was significantly lighter than Saturday. I weighed the individual pads, and subtracted the dry pad weight (25 grams). For the two days, my average net urine weight was 162.5 grams - or about 5.5 ounces, or about a third of a pound.

Options are:

1. Tuesday was way worse than I thought and I have been making steady progress all along.

2. The doctor's office made a mistake. Did they subract the dry pad weight?

3. I am doing something wrong with my trial at home, although I am not sure what it could be.

4. I am hitting the magic "getting better overnight" syndrome and this is all coincidence.

5 After 14 weeks I finally figured out how to do a kegel, and they work almost overnight.

6. I am a complete mental head case.

It is too hard to do this during the week (capturing wet pads at the office is no fun), so I'll try again next weekend.

In any event, this is raising my spirits, and making being incontinent a little more interesting. (As an ever-encouraging friend told me, "Well, at least you are #1 at #1.")

I apologize to anyone who injured themselves falling after they fell asleep reading this email.

Live on!

kcragman 

Great news Kc...I have never been able to get down to 162 grams.  Based on my experience testing extra liquid intake and more frequent bathroom trips, I would say that you are making definite improvement.  The only suggestion I would make is that you keep a record of your time intervals in your trips to the bathroom.  Obviously the more frequent the trips the less that goes in the pad.  In any case this indicates that your spincter is working good; provided that is that you spent a good amount of time during the weekend on your feet rather than being a couch potato like me.  My legs do not permit me to do much walking or standing so I compensate somewhat in my calculations by stretching out the time interval of my trips to the bathroom.

Another observation:  You say your pads are 25 grams...this is very light.  Mine are 50 gram pads (Depends Belted Shields).  I use 2-3 pads every 24 hours with an exception now and then going to a 4th pad.  I don't know particularly what the significance of the lighter pads are for you except that I think if I were using the lighter pads I would be going more frequently to relieve myself and change the pads more often.  If you don't mind me asking, how often do you go?  Maybe I should switch over, I don't know.