Health & Wellness Newsletter – Jan. 2025

This month: basic bladder management concepts

I still remember reading the “How to work with a spinal cord lesion” in rehabilitation after my C7 injury. There were many things that I did not love from my new reality, but one thing that hit particularly was the section on the control of the bladder. Strangely, the inability to walk, lack of feeling and bad grip strength were all I could understand. But having to put a tube in my bladder every two hours to urinate? That seemed beyond the pale.

Finally, I came to peace with my neurogenic bladder. But he took years of evidence and error. First discover the systems that worked in my daily life, then how to adapt when traveling, doing sports or anything else out of the ordinary. I would like to have had a resource that could have shown me what options were available and where you could get more information. That is why we are starting this health and well -being bulletin. Every month we will immerse ourselves in a specific topic and offer the type of practical information that, hopefully, can take it further on the way to a healthier and more functional.

Shine a spastic bladder

If you want to lead an active life as a wheelchair user, soothing the bladder spasms is one of your first business orders. The reduction of spasms helps keep more in their bladder, reduces the pressure of the bladder and its complications moving kidney, and gives it more time to get to a bath when you need to go.

Fortunately, there are many options to calm a spastic bladder. Oral medications are the least invasive and less expensive option, but they have the greatest amount of side effects. (I can still imagine the fibrous white spirit that would be formed in the mouth of a friend who uses wheelchair due to the amount of ditropan he used to take.

Modern bladder medications such as Myrbetriq do a great job by relieving spasms while reducing side effects, including the dreaded cerebral fog that anticholinergic medications such as Ditropan can produce. The disadvantage of drugs such as Myrbetriq has always been the cost. Then, a little good news: from April 2024, Myrbetriq is now available in a generic way. It is not yet cheap (Goodrx has a 30 -day supply that appears at $ 117 in pharmacies near me), but it is a significant reduction for those who are not successful with other options.

Other options include something as simple as applying a free sale transdermal oxybutinin patch. It is the same medication that is in Ditropan, but because it is absorbed through the skin, the side effects are reduced. Or you can ask your urologist for a Botox injection. Copagagos can administer a few hundred dollars, depending on their insurance, but wheelchair users generally swore for the procedure.

If none of that works for you, the next step could be to talk to your urologist about an increase in bladder, a reconstructive surgery that can increase the bladder capacity and reduce spasticity. Many wheelchair users also love the results of the increase, but it is a complete surgery with the costs and recovery it implies.

Hydration tip

Catheter options

For wheelchair users who have no bladder control, the two most common options to urinate are to use an intermittent or intermittent catheter.

Intermittent catheter technology has become much smarter in recent years. Hydrophilic coatings reduce damage to the urethra and eliminate the need to bring a ky tube everywhere. Flexible sleeves with hand -out tweezers help you maintain sterility. Closed systems facilitate urine in their truck before leaving the wild world of accessible bathrooms questionably. All are widely available, and the main companies such as NeckWellspect, Coloplast and Hollister have their versions.

The best place to see what is available is an event like Skills ExpoWhere you can visit all the cabins of the manufacturers, see and touch products, and decide which sales argument makes it the most reasonable. You can also consult the websites of manufacturers, all facilitate requesting free samples. Take them on it. All products have small variations that can make a big difference in how they work for their particular body. For a product that uses as often as a catheter, it is worth buying it.

The intermittent cathaing does not work for everyone, and many wheelchair users go with a foley or a suprapubic, an average catheter inserted in a surgically built hole in the lower part of the abdomen. Professionals are that they can be easier to handle for someone with a limited hand function, and can be useful for travel or other situations in which you do not know when or where you will find the next accessible bath. The high risk of infection is a problem, as well as the damage to the bladder lining for always having a strange object there. Sediment can also be an important problem with international catheters: I only read the story of Ian Ruder to try to discover why its catheter remained blocked.

For anyone who needs an average catheter but worries the complications of long -term use, see the RUDER review of the double ball urinary catheter of Trucath duo, which has two balloons designed to reduce irritation and damage to the coating of the coating of the bladder. “As someone who has dealt with more bladder problems than I care, the Trucath has offered a very necessary relief and has made it much easier to spend the day without the direflexia or the problems of incontinence continuously,” says Ruder .

Functional aptitude

Improve your balance and stability

1. Start feeling upright in your wheelchair. If you have wheel locks, participate. Put both hands on your knees.
2. Using your arms, get out of your backup so that your column are straight and your shoulders are stacked on your hips. Tighten the shoulder blades and hire all back muscles on which you have control. Keep for 30 seconds. Rest for 30 seconds to a minute and then move to step 3 or repeat 2-3 times.
3. For greater difficulty, lift a hand of the knee, staying vertically with the other arm. Hold for 30 seconds, rest, then change your arms and repeat. This variation is excellent for the practice of balance and the increase in isometric force on its committed side.
4. If you feel spicy, stay vertically with one arm and make active flexibility movements with the other. Aerial increases, single -arm blades and wide -arms circles work, basically any movement in which he brings his shoulder through his complete range of movement. Moving an arm while keeping in an stacked position makes the balance even more difficult. But if it maintains slow and controlled things, it is an excellent way to generate balance and stability even with limited trunk control.

The health and welfare newsletter is written by Seth McBride. A C7 Quad since 2000, McBride is based on two and a half decades of personal experience, seven years of experience in disability reports and a deep file of New mobility Content to translate complex issues of health and well -being into a monthly narrative newsletter with something for everyone. Whether you like the format and want to inform us, see something that we lost or want to suggest a topic to cover in the future, communicate.

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