The Secret I Stopped Keeping: Fecal Incontinence Stories

Inside this volume

Fifty first-person accounts describe fecal incontinence, the bowel leakage people rarely mention to anyone. Causes in the book include forceps and tears in childbirth, a fissure operation and a piles operation, radiation for prostate and cervical cancer, rectal cancer surgery, a J-pouch, Crohn's and ulcerative colitis, Parkinson's, multiple sclerosis, diabetes, a stroke, spina bifida, a spinal cord injury, a broken pelvis, C. diff caught after a knee operation and years of daily laxatives. The writers include a long-haul truck driver, a Lutheran pastor who walked out of his own sermon, a firefighter, a ferry captain, the mother of a seven-year-old, a wife of fifty-one years caring for a husband with Alzheimer's and a woman of eighty-five in a care home, from Columbus to Kuala Lumpur and Galway to Accra. They describe bowel diaries and psyllium, pelvic floor therapy, a small silicone device, a bile acid binder stirred into applesauce, a wire and remote tried for a trial week, a repair more than twenty years after a village birth, and a permanent colostomy chosen after a long struggle. Commutes, lectures, prayer and business travel all had to be planned around it. No single treatment helped everyone, and a few writers still manage rather than fix, and say so plainly.

Who it's for

For anyone who has kept bowel leakage to themselves, and for the partners, parents, grown children and carers on the other side of the bathroom door who want to understand it.

Format · Instant download · PDF & EPUB · Fifty first-person accounts · PDF: 243 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.