Learning to Cath: Neurogenic Bladder Stories

Inside this volume

Fifty first-person accounts describe neurogenic bladder and learning to use a catheter several times a day. The causes are wide: spinal cord injuries from a roof fall, a rugby tackle, a surf accident and an army vehicle rollover; spina bifida, sacral agenesis, cerebral palsy and a tethered cord; multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's, stroke, diabetes, transverse myelitis, Guillain-Barré, cauda equina syndrome, Fowler's syndrome and shingles; nerve damage after cancer surgery or a long birth. Writers range from a fifteen-year-old managing at school and an eighteen-year-old leaving the children's clinic to a ferry deckhand who learned at seventy-two and a seamstress of eighty-one, alongside a mother teaching her son in Lagos and a wife learning with her husband after his stroke, from Cape Town to Calgary and Mumbai to Missoula. They describe a small mirror, seventeen catheters tried before finding the right three, Botox for an overactive bladder, a bladder enlargement, a channel through the belly button, an implanted device, urodynamics tests, alarms for a failing memory and paperwork for supplies. Pregnancy, dating, camping, swimming and telling friends all appear. Not everything is smooth: one teacher counted eleven bladder infections in a year, another woman waited eleven years for the right name for her condition, and some are still working towards acceptance.

Who it's for

For anyone who has just been handed a catheter and told to try, people who have done it for years and want company, and the parents and partners learning beside them.

Format · Instant download · PDF & EPUB · Fifty first-person accounts · PDF: 233 pages

A collection of personal testimony, offered as companion reading — not medical advice.

• 50 single-author testimonies from real people
• A short, plain-language introduction to the topic
• Editor's note, contents page, and curated resource list
• Professional interior typesetting and an original cover

Every purchase includes a print-quality PDF (best for desktop, tablet, and printing) and a reflowable EPUB (best for Kindle, Apple Books, Kobo, and phones). Files are DRM-free. You can download both instantly from the order-confirmation screen, and we email them to your inbox as well, so your books are always within reach.