“I had a normal life”, starts Maite Carreras, 64 years old. “She had a small restaurant in the Empordà (Girona), the illusion of my life One day, picking up a pot, I felt as if something inside me was breaking. My womb had dropped,” tells this neighbor of Cervià de Ter (Girona). So they operated on her but something went wrong and caused her fecal Incontinence, What is it the inability to control the exit of feces from the body. The year was 1998, when she was 40.
That changed his life forever. “He had no tact and he did it to me up to 30 times a day. It was horrible.” The trauma was such that Maite stopped working because couldn’t leave the house. Thus he lost his restaurant and, like a fish that bites its tail, he ended up losing the house because he could not pay for it. At the age of four, seeing how no doctor could find a solution to what was happening to him, attempted suicide.
Maite lost her restaurant and her house and, after four years with the disease, she tried to commit suicide
3% of the population between 20 and 29 years of age and up to 15% of those over 70 years of age suffer from faecal incontinence, according to the Association of Family and Community Nursing (Aificc). In Spain, warns the Incontinence Association (Asia), they suffer from it between 2 and 4 million people. There is also six million suffering from urinary incontinence. “But no one talks about this” those affected report. Aificc calculates that un third of patients with anal incontinence do not explain it to health professionals.
live in a shower
Maite continues her story. “My daily life was sitting in the shower And, when they told me that there was no solution, I thought that I didn’t want to live that way. But they caught me in time.” I couldn’t go anywhere. went to the doctor “wrapped in plastic bags”. He lost everything, he says, “except family.” To the five years, finally, the doctors found a solution.
“They put a neurostimulator: a device similar to a pacemaker that, when you have to go to the bathroom, It sends signals to your brain since I’m still tactless,” says Maite. From then on, her life improved, although sometimes she still suffers from incontinence, especially when she’s very nervous. “Sometimes I can’t leave the house, but I manage it well, Can I make a almost normal life ensures. In addition, thanks to the neurostimulator, only “escaping”” Two or three times a day, and “on time”.
Patients use sacral neurostimulators: a device similar to a pacemaker that sends signals to the brain when they have to go to the bathroom
Now look back and there’s a episode that was especially engraved in the fire of those five years. “The day that I saw my little son cry because I couldn’t leave the house. There I had a very great remorse for having tried to take my life. I regretted it a lot.”
Risk factor’s
In addition to age, there other risk factors to suffer from faecal incontinence, such as the presence of poor health, general physical limitations, diabetes, neurological problems, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or inflammatory bowel disease. They suffer so much women Like the mens, and also the kids.
The main treatment is the education Y habit changes necessary to reduce the possibility of involuntary loss of stools. The first phase, for all patients, is the proper implementation of diet, modify the eating habits and regulate the gut traffic. Other treatments go through medication and even reparative surgery.
Some risk factors are poor health, diabetes, neurological problems, lung disease or inflammatory bowel disease
The “hardest” years
“Having fecal incontinence touched me all spheres of my life: the Social, the family, the labor and even the sexual”, account for your part Angels Roca, 64-year-old resident of Cambrils (Tarragona) and president of the Incontinence Association (Asia). She has suffered from it for 23 years, following the birth of her third and last child. “Was a forceps delivery, traumatic, difficult, which left me with fecal incontinence. And what had to be the happiest moment of my life became the saddest”, Add. The next 10 years of his life were “the hardest”.
Before that, Àngels had a job that “made” her: was public relations for restaurants and nightclubs, something that involved a “very intense social life”. When she returned to work after her third birth, she was unable to “verbalize” what was happening to him. “But when it happened to me, I had to leave because I smelled bad. I was anxious thinking if it would happen to me at the next meeting or event,” he recalls. It happened “at any time of the day,” she says. “Without noticing. It’s very invalidating.”
Àngels ended up quitting his job, abandoned his entire social life and even moved, along with his whole family, to another municipality. “I dragged my family with my problem. I don’t know if I did it right. Because the worst of all was family life. So that people wouldn’t tell my children that their mother smelled bad, I stopped going to everything that was important to them, like the end-of-course acts. I missed the best of them. My little son’s first steps… I didn’t go to the park with him, he didn’t go to school,” says Àngels.
It happened “at any time of the day,” says a patient. “Without realizing it. It’s very invalidating”
It also affected his sex life because, no matter how much “confidence” there was, she “invalidated” herself. “You are ashamed, you don’t want to have sex because you know that, at a given moment, in any relaxation, you do it to yourself”, confess.
According to Asian data, 25% of people with faecal incontinence have stopped traveling, 27% have stopped having sex and more than 65% do not talk about it even with their family.
“Nurses: we need you”
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After 10 years of having tried “almost everything”, the doctors began to test with Àngels the “sacral neuromodulation”, which consists of the implantation of the same device that Maite uses. “They put it on the buttock of your ass and it’s connected with a cable at the sacral root,” she explains. He has given her “quality of life” (“I can ride a bicycle”, he exemplifies), while before his life “depended on a sink”.
Now you have three grandchildren and ensures that “nothing of them” is lost. He thus recovers the time that he could not spend with his children. Àngels ends up claiming the role of nurses: “We need them by our side. Sometimes, with a systematic question -Do you have incontinence?- They can help us. Are the closest, who give us more confidence and with whom we have less shame.”