Emily Dawson

Stop Building Your Whole Day Around Your Bladder

My daughter-in-law told my son the guest room smells like pee every time I stay. I was lying on the other side of the wall when she said it. "I love your mom, Danny. I do. But I washed those sheets twice last time, and I still had to leave the window open for two days." I waited for my son to say something. "I know. I'll figure something out." I washed that boy's sheets every morning the year he was six and never said a word about it to anyone. I didn't move. I'd put a folded towel under me before I got into bed, the way I always do at their house. It hadn't made any difference. They knew anyway. The next morning I got up early to strip the bed. Kara was already in the kitchen. "Oh, leave that, Barb. I'll get it." "No, no. I've got it." I carried the sheets to the washer myself, bunched up tight against my chest so she wouldn't have to touch them. Then I sat down at breakfast and asked Emma about her spelling test like it was any other Saturday. ===== I thought I'd been careful. I really did. I wore a pad every single day and changed it twice if I was going out. My underwear got washed in its own load with a cup of vinegar. Whenever I stayed over at Danny's, I put a folded towel under me in the guest bed. After lunch, if I had anywhere to be, I stopped drinking water. And every morning I put my nose right into the neck of my sweater and smelled it. It always smelled fine to me. I'm sixty-three years old and I could not smell a thing. That night at home, I started going over things. Kara always had a candle going when I came over. I thought she just liked candles. Emma used to climb all over me. This last year her hugs got quick. She'd squeeze and be gone before I could get my arms around her. Whenever we went somewhere, Danny would say, "Mom, you sit up front," and then he'd put my window down a couple of inches. I used to think that was sweet of him. He was airing out the car. A week later Danny called. "You're staying the weekend, right? Noah wants you there when he wakes up." "I'll see, honey. My back's been bad." My back was fine. I didn't call my doctor. I couldn't figure out how you even say that out loud. My family thinks I smell? So at two in the morning I looked it up on my phone, and every answer told me to buy a better pad. I was already wearing a pad. For weeks, every time I picked up the phone to tell Danny no, I pictured Noah waking up and looking for me. ===== The person I finally told was Carol. We've been friends for thirty years and we walk around the lake every Tuesday. I didn't plan to tell her. We were halfway around and it just came out. "Kara sprayed Febreze on the couch where I'd been sitting. Emma watched her do it." "Oh, Barb." "Be honest with me. Have you ever smelled it?" She looked out at the water instead of at me. "Sometimes. In the car." "Why didn't you say anything?" "Because three years ago it was me." I stopped walking. "Rick bought me perfume for my birthday," she said. "I don't wear perfume. It took me a year to figure out why he bought it." "You never told me." "Would you have told me?" I thought about it. "No." "But I smell my clothes every single morning. How can I not smell it?" "Because it's you. Your nose gets used to you. It's like walking into somebody's house and smelling their dog when they can't." She stopped to drink from her water bottle and held it out to me. I shook my head. "You never bring water anymore." "Not if I'm going out." "See, that's the other thing. The pelvic floor therapist I saw told me not drinking makes it worse. Your pee gets stronger, so whatever leaks out smells stronger too." "It's only drops. That's what the pad's for." "That's exactly what I told her." The first time Carol went in, the therapist asked her one question. When you stand up from a chair, or bend over, or cough, do you ever feel a little warm? Carol said sometimes, but it was only a drop. "And she said that's it. That's the whole thing. A few drops, twenty times a day, into a pad that sits right up against you all day long. You stop noticing them." "But why now? I never used to do that." "She said after menopause your estrogen drops and the tissue down there dries out. It happens so slowly you don't notice." "I knew about the dryness. I thought that was just a problem in the bedroom." "So did I. It's the same tissue that holds your pee in. Think about your lips in the winter, how they dry out and crack. When that tissue gets dry and thin, it doesn't close up tight like it used to. That's where the drops come from." "I did those squeezing exercises for years." "Me too. Those are for the muscle. Exercise doesn't fix chapped lips. They need moisture." We walked for a while before I asked the other thing. "Is that why I'm up all night too?" "How many times?" "Three. Sometimes four." "I was the same. She said the lining inside your bladder gets thin too, so even a little bit of pee bothers it and wakes you up." "And then I get in there and hardly anything comes out." "Right. Because you're not full. It just feels like you are." "So what did you do?" "She had me try something. Two capsules in the morning." "I've tried stuff like that." "So have I. That's why I almost didn't. The stuff I tried before only went after one thing, and she said menopause changes a lot more than one thing down there. This one's got that stuff they put in face cream. Hyaluronic something." "Face cream?" "She said your body uses it on the inside too. For the dryness." "Did it work?" She stopped on the path and turned toward me. "Do you smell anything on me right now?" I leaned over right there on the path and sniffed her shoulder. "No." "Well, there you go. It took a few weeks, though." "What's it called?" "I'll text you. I always say it wrong. And bring water next Tuesday." Her text came before I even got home. Elavie. That night I sat at the kitchen table and looked up everything on the label. The hyaluronic acid Carol couldn't say was right at the top, along with pumpkin seed for a bladder that squeezes too soon, soy germ for the estrogen part, and magnesium for the nerves that keep telling you to go. I ordered it before I went to bed. ===== For the first couple of weeks I didn't notice much. I kept wearing a pad and smelling my sweater every morning, even though Carol had told me it was pointless. About three weeks in, I realized I'd only gotten up twice in the night. The next night was bad again, so I figured it was a fluke. Then a few nights later I only got up once. Around six weeks, I noticed I was changing my pad less. By the end of the day it was nearly dry. I started drinking a full glass of water before I left the house, like a normal person. On Tuesdays I brought my own bottle. One morning I was backing out of the driveway when it hit me that I hadn't smelled my sweater. I hadn't even thought about it. I almost went back inside to check, and then I just went to the store. The next Tuesday at the lake, I asked Carol to smell my sweater. She didn't ask why. She just leaned in. "Nothing. Laundry soap." "Are you sure?" "I'm sure." We looked at each other, and then we both started laughing. ===== I stayed the whole weekend for Noah's birthday. I didn't put a towel down. Saturday afternoon we all piled into Danny's car to go to the bowling alley for the party. "Mom, you sit up front." I watched his hand the whole way there. He never touched the window button. That night we watched a movie, and Emma fell asleep on my lap halfway through. Danny carried her up to bed. I went down the hall to the bathroom, and when I came back to the doorway, Kara had her feet up on the other end of the couch. The Febreze was on the bookshelf, right where she'd left it. Sunday morning I stripped the guest bed like always. Kara came in to help, and this time I let her. She gathered the sheets up in her arms and carried them down the hall. She didn't hold them out in front of her, and she didn't say anything. Before I left, I found her alone in the kitchen. "Kara, can I tell you something? The last time I was here, I saw you. With the Febreze." She froze with the dish towel in her hand. "Oh no. Barb, I'm so sorry." "You weren't wrong. I just didn't know. I couldn't smell it." "You couldn't?" So I told her what Carol told me about the drops. A few all day long, so small you stop noticing them, and your own nose gets used to the smell. "I feel awful," she said. "Oh, honey, don't. I almost didn't come this weekend." "Well, I'm really glad you did." She hugged me. It wasn't a quick one. Danny carried my bag out to the car. I drove home with the window rolled all the way up and nothing on the seat but me. ===== The perfume is pushed to the back of my dresser now. It's almost full. The pads and the perfume were only ever covering it up, and I was the one person in that family who couldn't tell. If you've started smelling your own sweater before you leave the house, or sitting on a towel in your own car, you probably can't smell it either. The people who love you can. Most of them will never say it to your face. They'll just light a candle or crack a window. Elavie was the first thing that actually helped me. It's two capsules a day, and it comes with a 60-day money-back guarantee. If it doesn't work for you, you get your money back. This is the page Carol texted me: https://elaviedaily.com/products/elavie-bladder-support Last month Danny and Kara went away for their anniversary. They asked me to take the kids for the whole weekend. Emma slept in my bed both nights.