Urogynaecological conditions: prolapse, bladder and pelvic floor problems

Yeah, at the very worst of it, I basically couldn’t work, couldn’t look after my kids. I was probably in bed for at least half a day, every single day and that went on for quite a few months. I’m-, you know, I wasn’t really socialising or doing anything at all because I was just in so much pain. I mean, as things have improved slowly, it’s been a sort of gradual build up, really. I think about six months after it started I braved going back to some of my exercise and I was lucky there was some really supportive people where I go to the gym. So, they’ve really helped me. But then, you know, even then you never really knew if you would go back for a week and then you’d be off for weeks again. So, you know, I think it’s really only been in the last month maybe that I actually feel reasonably confident that I can go and do my normal exercise and I really, really enjoy that so that’s fantastic. But, I still can’t do anything with any high impact. I mean, I used to run loads. I used to cycle loads. I can’t do any of that.

Basically, you lose a lot, for me, I lost a lot of weight because I just couldn’t eat. I couldn’t, because it affects, because I’m in pain anyway it was just another additional pain on top of that so I was quite bedridden at times couldn’t go to work. Luckily, my children are all grown up or older so they would do the housework. I couldn’t do housework, I couldn’t do, you know, even change my bed, you know, needed help sort of to the bathroom all those types of things, it completely affected my life. It took all my strength basically I was sort of, you would think I would have a real chronic illness and was recovering from it but all it was a water infection. I don’t think people realise how serious they can become if you don’t get the right treatment.

Going to the loo, I found that the, the bladder issues were in a way simpler at night, sometimes I could get back to sleep straight way but at other times I would lie awake because then I’d start thinking I would get up go to the loo and then I’d think about other things that I was anxious about. So I would have a time between, quite often between 4 and 6 o’clock in the morning and then as a result I’d be getting up later because I’d be going back to sleep and waking up. So yes, broken sleep, not as bad as daytime I would say. Because when I wasn’t working, I was able to sleep in more.

I fret getting up off a bus seat it’s affect-, I mean there’s me fretting I’m in somebody’s house about and I know different settees, it’s like my daughter, the flat she’s in, the settee that’s there, I think ‘Oh god I can’t get out of it.’ I can’t get out because it’s so painful but I’m also going to maybe wet myself just with the exertion so ‘Is that the hip again?’ you know, this is all my-, [sighs]. It’s really difficult to say to people, I’ll go back to that one, why you can’t go away with them that you finally have to say, the only, the only thing my sister wanted to take, my sister, I know she cares a lot about me and she wanted to take, wanted me to go and stay with her for a month and I thought, ‘Oh my God,’ I thought, so I thought, ‘God I couldn’t even handle the incontinence thing on its own and I thought ‘Well I can’t’ because she’s so-, she’s got a pristine house and everything, how can I say that “You’ll need to wash my, I’ll need to wash the sheets, you know, twice a night”?

It’s just so unpredictable. You don’t know from, on a day-to-day basis how you’re going to be and how you wake up feeling in the morning isn’t necessarily indicative of the sort of day you’re going to have. So, I might wake up and think, ‘Oh I’m having a better day today,’ and then by lunchtime I’m crippled. Or I might wake up in the morning and think, ‘Oh I’ve had a really bad night, and I’m in a lot of pain,” and then all of a sudden it seems to ease and then I feel almost normal. It’s just really difficult to predict.

The only this is, I suppose it stopped me jogging because I found that if I jogged then I would wet myself. So that, not a big deal, I wasn’t that keen on jogging in the first place. And all it does is mess up your knees anyway, doesn’t it? So yeah, I mean running I suppose, on, on a full bladder is a bit of problem sometimes. But then it doesn’t really matter because if I’m going to do, run, like when I run on my running machine, then I just empty my bladder first and I suppose it makes cycling easier ‘cos you know you’re okay on a bike. It sort of seals it off as long as you sit on the saddle fairly tightly.

I did, I was using a rebounder, I don’t know if you know what a rebounder is, so like a little trampoline that you exercise on because that’s very joint friendly and it’s very good for the lymph system and I’ve had to stop that completely which I’m sad about but again I can’t risk making things worse so yeah. But everything else, we walk a lot, it hasn’t stopped me walking. I think very early on I was I used the Nordic walking sticks sometimes and they, they provided quite a lot of support because they lift you through the core when you walk that push with sticks and again I’ve pretty well stopped that but I know they’re there if I have a bad day and I want to go for a walk, I can use the sticks. We cycle a lot; the cycling seems to help. Swimming is fine. So, there’s plenty of exercise that I can do.

So I’m a runner and I teach quite a lot of fitness classes and the first physio was like, “You’ve got to stop running,” but to take that away from me is massive and I don’t think she realised like the impact that had on my life because all of a sudden I can’t do what I love and I don’t know what else to do to kind of you know, for fitness so again I did put on weight during and that kind of worried me as well because of taking away something that is my release to life I suppose. And I take classes so I had to reduce my and I understand that I had reduce my weight classes as well. I didn’t stop teaching because I don’t, financially, I needed to. Obviously, I just made adaptations and then obviously people in class were asking and I was quite, I didn’t really, initially I didn’t say, I just said, “Oh I’ve got a bad back, I’ve just got to be careful. I’m having physio” because again you don’t really know, no-one really speaks about it as though all of a sudden it’s very kind of, puts in a little bit of a different world I suppose.
 

So I just kind of, I never plan anything, so each day I just see how I am to see what I can do. But the furthest I do is probably go like around the shop, for food shopping or just for like a little shop. That’s all really. Or go ‘round to see like family and just sit in their house and stuff. But a lot of the time I just stay at home, but like I fill the week, my partner’s at work so I do try and go down to me parents’ house, so I’m not on me own all day, and they come and see me and stuff, so I’m not sitting around all day.
 
So I try and do that every day when I can, but sometimes when I’m there the pain gets so bad that I get stuck there. So sometimes I can’t get back home ‘cos I can’t get in the car. So I just like sometimes get stuck there for like five days to a week, and one time it was like two months I was there, ‘cos I just really couldn’t get out of the house at all, ‘cos it went into like to a horrendous flare up. So I just couldn’t do anything at all. I’m scared to go out for meals or anything, I don’t go out for meals or nothing like that now because I don’t know what the chair situation is like or anything like that, and I, it’s silly but when you go out with people, like if you went out for someone’s birthday or something like that, or, you just don’t want to spoil it for other people because you think like if it starts, like I’m going to be in pain and then like obviously someone’ll come with us when I leave and stuff, and I don’t want to like spoil their day and stuff, so I kind of just say “Oh I’ll like not really come today.”
 

I’ve never been like a really sporty person but I do like going for walks in the countryside and birdwatching and that kind of thing, but I can’t walk now as far as I used to be able, maybe I can do two or three miles, no, three or four miles comfortably. Anything more than that and it starts to get quite uncomfortable and I feel like I need to, you know at least have a long rest or lie down for a bit, or something like that. So it’s changed what I’m able to do and what I’m able to enjoy.
 
Things like gardening I find quite difficult, which is really frustrating ‘cos I love gardening but every time I…you know like at times when I feel that I’ve made things worse it’s always been when I’ve just been trying to move a flowerpot or something like that, so I have to be really, really careful with anything that involves any lifting.

So whereby I’d go on holiday with my son and for me that would be quite a lot of money and, you know, we, we’ve only sort of been, I’ve been trying to do one of those and things for the last few years because he’s growing up so quickly, he’s nearly thirteen so but then I wasn’t being able to go in the pool with him and I felt so sad about that because, you know, these are special moments. So, I remember a couple of times having to sit outside the pool throw the ball to him or just sort of engage with him and not be able to get in the pool. If we go to the sea, you know, I’d just splash my feet and that was it and I love water, I think water is therapy, baths I love, I can’t do it anymore. So for me that’s a real source of sadness.

And the impact, I just, I just got on with it, I just got on with it. But even at the start, before I had children, with, you know before I had the first surgery, it would just become something you laughed about. Oh, oh I’ve got to go and change, and actually I did you know, having four kids, I’ve been on the trampoline, I’ve, I’ve done all the things, you know, active, “Oh God, I’ve got to go in, I’ve wet myself.” Do you know what I mean? And I’d just, go, or, or if I, if I was able to, that’s if I was at home. You know so you just go and change. It just become the norm. I’ve even been known to actually, to take my underwear off, and just put my trousers back on.

So there is that and then as you kind of get better there’s a lot of people saying, you know family might say, “of course, of course you can play tennis or do this activity and you just have to know your boundaries and just say, you know, “Maybe in future but right now I don’t feel, like I’m not gonna do that right now but thanks,” [laughs]. You know, because people I think with any kind of, they don’t really realise it’s a, it’s a kind of a chronic condition you’ll have if you’re not a candidate for surgery. It’s a condition you have to be mindful of, it’s a lifestyle, you know, and you can get back to those activities you love but there might be times when you’re doing rehab and recovery and getting stronger and you don’t wanna get back to things you used to do right now and you probably do have to just keep telling people, “Yeah maybe next season I’ll get back to that but not right now.”