Incontinence, or "My Cup Runneth Over."

I had a meeting today with Marcie Dayan, a physiotherapist in Vancouver who, in and amongst her practice, has a specialized knoweldge and practice in working with incontinence problems.

From what I can see, there are two problems that especially muck up the life of older people. One is pain. The second is incontinence.

Incontinence is one of the "hiddens" in aging. We joke about it, we laugh at jokes at '"adult diapers." But to the people who deal with it, it if often hidden in shame and embarrassment. Itcan restrict their lives and separate them from those they love. This despite it being very common to some extent with many older people. It needs to come out of the closet.

From her brochure, "(Incontinence) is not a disease, but a symptom of a physical or neurological problem It is estimated that up to 25% of adults have urinary incontinence and that women are affected twice as often as men. Although the chance of becoming incontinent increases with age, it happens to people of all ages and is NOT a natural part of aging."

Marcie is working to help bring the problem of incontinence out of the shame. She reviewed the different kinds of incontinence there are: stress, urge, overflow, and frankly just at this moment I forget the fourth. She told me about the assessment, exercises, and programmes she can do to help.

What Marcie does, in some ways is give some people hope. She cannot help everyone-- clients need to have a certain level of cognitive ability, and a certain level of what might be called supportive skills. But even by talking about incontinence, and normalizing it. she helps to take away the shame, and that, in itself is a huge help.

Marcie can be reached at 604-739-3133. Tell her I sent you