Hold It!

Raise your hand if when you sneeze, you also pee yourself a little. Don't be shy. It happens. Guys included. This convulsive expulsion bursts out at over 47 mph (or 75 km). At that speed, if you didn't release a little pee, you might spurt around the room like a balloon. Conservatively, at least 33.3% of all females who sneeze—or cough or laugh or do aerobics or, my favorite, jump on trampolines—leak a tad. Dude, party's over.

FYI Kegelmeisters, your beloved kegel can only do so much. I personally perfected the Squeeze-n-Sneeze. Cross your knees, brace yourself, and then ACHOO! But everybody knows what you're doing, right? Don't answer that.

Recently I went to a doc for a urodynamics test. This is THE worst test you can undergo ever. EVER. One word, people: cath (short for catheter, which can no longer be uttered in my presence without me shriveling up and whimpering in a corner). You get a cath up the old U-ha and suddenly you're in your tech's face spitting: "Kill me now, or get that mo-fo outta me before I kill you." I mean, I'm just guessing. Ahem, as a result of that torture, my doc decided I was a candidate for the bladder sling. He said, "Why don't you try a pessary first, though, before we go the surgical route?" And I thought he was my advocate.

See, a pessary is a flat, circular, spacecraft-hard plastic device about two inches in diameter, with holes. Think giant white button, circa 1950. Think Frisbee inside your tummy control pantyhose. Think flying saucer embedded inside the Holland Tunnel. A pessary sits horizontally inside the hoo-ha. Its position keeps the urethra in place so you don't leak when you sneeze. Sounds like a reasonable solution, right? Except for a little thing called logistics.

Issue One: blind installation. It’s not like you’ve got a telescope that sees around corners.
Issue Two: we’re talkin’ deep into the jungle, people. Remember when you lost your earring down the drain? Did sticking your fingers down into that little hole really work? Could you have used a Nifty Nabber for gripping that sucker?
Issue Three: navigating tender vajajay tissue with fingernails, especially acrylics. Does this really need explanation?

After only 48 hours, I tossed my pessary into a drawer.

TG texted me two weeks later: Hey, what's that thing that looks like a button in your room?
Me: No clue.
TG: Kids are playing with it.
Me: Still don't know.
TG: They're tossing it around like it's a Frisbee.
Me: Nope, don't have a—wait, looks like a little disc, with holes? White? Hard plastic?
TG: Yeah.
Me: You don't want to know what that is.
TG: Destructo had it in his mouth.
Me: Um, how about those Cowboys?

I knew then what I had to do. To protect the nanababies from future trauma--the kind that can only come from their mom telling all their friends that they once chewed on a Feminine Frisbee, I signed up for the bladder sling. That's what I've been up to the last week and why I haven’t blogged. When I heal in six weeks, I'll let you know if the Squeeze-n-Sneeze will be part of my repertoire ever again. The Feminine Frisbee will not.
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