We recently received a comment on our blog from a wonderfully courageous and honest woman about the often embarrassing and humiliating experience of seeking medical help for urinary urgency, leakage, or frequency–in a word, urinary incontinence. If you read our blog regularly, then you know that we are big advocates of women getting an accurate diagnosis and help from a qualified medical professional for urinary incontinence.
What If Your Doctor Can’t Help You?
But sometimes seeking help from a doctor doesn’t always work out the way we think it will. While we would all like to think that our doctor has a sympathetic bedside manner, is chock-full of solutions, and can “fix” our problems right away, sometimes that doesn’t happen. As the woman points out in her comment on the blog, even if you build up the courage to seek help from your doctor, there can be two negative outcomes from this kind of encounter with your doctor:
1. Your doctor does not feel you have a medical problem, and hence offers no medical diagnosis and no solutions.
2. Your doctor gives you a specific diagnosis of urinary incontinence, but has no solutions to offer.
Now those are definite show-stoppers. What do you do now? You’ve spent all that time and energy working up the courage to talk to your doctor… and the results are definitely less-than-satisfying, if not downright depressing!
What to Do Next…
If either of the above options happens when you seek help from your doctor for symptoms like urinary urgency, leakage, or frequency, don’t despair (or, don’t spend more than five minutes having a pity party!). You have multiple options, and will need to choose the one or ones that best fit your situation.
One additional factor noted in the blog comment is that women who experience either of the above mentioned outcomes from their doctor tend to be highly disappointed, and also much less likely to seek a second opinion. They have, as it were, used up their reservoir of courage, and don’t have any more to spare.
However, there are actions that you can take, even if you feel like you have no more courage to seek help from additional sources. Here are three options that we know work for women after a “failed” encounter with a doctor.
1. Ask for a Referral Before You Leave
If you don’t get the answers or solutions for women’s urinary incontinence you seek while sitting in your doctor’s office, you can and should take action before you leave the office. Chances are that you have seen your family doctor or general practitioner, who may not have the resources or experience to properly diagnose your condition or offer you appropriate therapies. What your family doctor can do for you is give you a referral to a urologist, gynecologist, or other specialist who is more likely to be able to help you. After all, a urologist is more likely to know how to help you with urinary incontinence than your family doctor.
2. Get an Appointment Before You Leave
With most referral systems these days, the office of the referred doctor will likely call you rather than requiring you to call them. This means that you do not need to gather up the courage to make another appointment–the referral system will likely take care of that for you. You can even ask your doctor if this is how your healthcare network’s system works. If not–or regardless of how the system works–you can ask your doctor if his or her staff can call the urologist’s office–right then and there–and make the appointment for you. Most doctors are more than happy to accommodate. This simplifies your life and helps you avoid the embarrassment of making another appointment.
3. Get the Pertinent Medical Records
While you are still at the doctor’s office, you can take one further step to reduce embarrassment and simplify your life. Ask your doctor to print out the medical record of that day’s visit, plus any other relevant medical history. Bring that record with you to your appointment with the urologist to avoid repeating yourself to the urologist. Some doctor’s offices can also simply forward the records to the specialist’s office. However, we recommend getting a copy for your own records, just in case the records fail to get forwarded in time for your next appointment.
How to Prevent Negative Outcomes
If you have not yet seen your family doctor for help with your urinary incontinence, you can take some steps to prepare for your appointment and, quite possibly, avoid the negative outcomes described previously.
1. Keep a Bladder Diary
A bladder diary is just how it sounds. It is a record of your bladder behavior and habits. You record when and how often your urinate, how much you urinate, how often you experience urge without leakage, how often you have leakage accidents, and so forth. For more information on how to keep a bladder diary, click HERE.
We recommend keeping a bladder diary for a minimum of a week. You may be surprised at how often you have to urinate, or how many lifestyle factors can trigger your urinary incontinence. Once you have a week’s worth of data in a bladder diary, you are ready to visit your family practitioner. The bladder diary will “do all the talking” for you, and let your doctor know immediately whether you have bladder issues or not. In addition, we recommend that you do some research on your own to determine what is and is not “normal” when it comes to urinary habits. Our book, A Woman’s Guide to Pelvic Health, contains a lot of data on the three types of urinary incontinence–including what is normal. Armed with this knowledge, you can confidently speak with your doctor about your condition and insist on getting the help you need, even if that means getting a referral.
2. Call Your Family Doctor for a Referral
Depending on the kind of relationship you have with your family practitioner, you may possibly be able to avoid the embarrassment of having two conversations about your urinary incontinence: one with your family doctor and the other with a specialist. If you have a close and trusting relationship with your family practitioner, you may be able to simply call that doctor’s office and get a referral to a specialist. If you are able to do so, we still recommend that you educate yourself about your condition and keep a bladder diary prior to seeing the specialist. Both will help you get the answers and solutions you need for your urinary incontinence.
3. Ask a Friend for a Referral
If you know of friends who have seen doctors who have been helpful and sympathetic about urinary incontinence, ask those friends for the names of those doctors. Then make an appointment. If you are too “wiped out” after a negative first encounter with a doctor, ask your friend to help you make an appointment. Sometimes just having a friend standing next to you can give you the courage and support you need. You can go one step further and ask your friend to accompany you on your visit. If your friend has already been through the process of diagnosing and treating urinary incontinence, she will know the questions to ask as well as the answers you need to have ready for your doctor. Sometimes a good buddy is the best medicine!
A Little Preparation Goes a Long Way
As you can see, being prepared for appointments with medical professionals can help you make the most out of each encounter. Whether you have already seen your family doctor or not, you can take steps to get the solutions you need from any healthcare professional. Hopefully the tips in this article will be helpful and supportive to women who desperately want to get help for their urinary incontinence, but for some reason have not been able to obtain that help!
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