Incontinence during/following treatment?

I had urge incontinence a year after my radiation due to mild radiation proctitis. I took Myrbetriq to relax my (involuntary) detrusor muscle help me get it under control, and it took about 5 months before I was confident dispensing with the pads.

For the fecal incontinence (which I didn't experience), you could also try adding some dietary constipants to your diet, like yogurt, rice, bananas, and kefir. When I experienced severe diarrhea during an aid deployment to Africa 10 years ago, it was eating lots of plain, unsweetened yoghurt that started my recovery.

“unsweetened yoghurt’

Sounds like eating that yogurt was a painful decision.

No non sugar sweeteners allowed?

I actually love the tanginess of unsweetened yoghurt (and kefir), so it was a win-win for me. 🙂

First step would be to get a diagnosis for both the urinary and bowel issues:
> is your urinary issue a bladder, sphincter, urethra, UTI, if related issue?
> is your bowel issue proctitis, rectal/bowel injury, or ulceration. (Have they done a colonoscopy to look for any damage?)

Did you strictly adhere to your full/bladder empty bowel routine?
Did you use a rectal spacer?

If this is not within your rad onc’s field of expertise, he should refer you to o’a specialist.

Can you recommend a full/empty routine? A recent colonoscopy didn’t mention any damage. SpaceOar inserted before radiation.

Full bladder/empty bowel routine is fairly standard prep for external radiation treatments. If you didn’t do it pre-radiation, it’s too late now.

Side-effects (bladder/bowel) from radiation are due to overshooting the prostate. If you’re having both urinary and bowel incontinence, you should have someone in that expertise check the nearby tissues and organs for radiation damage.

I'm sorry, I misunderstood. I wasn't told anything about bowel, but a full bladder was required before treatment would be administered.

In addition to full bladder, “…a bowel that is free of stool and gas also reduces the amount of radiation exposure to the rectum and surrounding tissues.”

Maintaining a consistent bladder volume and empty rectum ensures that the prostate is in the same position for each treatment, which is important for accurate radiation delivery. Helps minimize/prevent the risk urinary/bowel incontinence.

I cannot speak for the bowel issue. As far as urinary incontinence, the best solution by far (perhaps including the AUS) is an incontinence clamp. Amazon has multiple brands. I found the Wiesner fits most comfortably. Worn 18-20 hours a day, I need only one Tena Sensitive Overnight high absorbency pad a day. The clamp enables me to do virtually anything I want and it doesn’t hurt when I sit like the AUS and an invasive procedure is not needed to adjust or replace it, like the AUS. It’s $35 a life saver.

I use the wiesner clamp, I usually forget it’s even on and occasionally I don’t remember to take it off. At the three hour point it starts to hurt a little. I usually set a two hour timer on my phone to remember to take it off.

The documentation for the clamps say that they should only be on for two hours, and if you want to continue, you should move it to a different spot.

It can cause damage to the urethra so you want to be careful. Wearing it as much as you say is not safe Unless you’re moving it around Every couple of hours.