| Urinary incontinence ruled Missy Smith’s life for more than 40 years.
A car trip meant knowing where the nearest bathroom would be. If she were on the back roads, she’d have gas stations with the cleanest bathrooms in mind. On the interstate she became familiar with how far apart the exits were, and she only shopped at stores with bathrooms.
Smith, 63, of Winchester, Tenn., is one of millions of adults in the United States who experience urinary incontinence, the involuntary leakage of urine. A condition experienced by women twice as often as men, it’s embarrassing, frustrating and debilitating, causing some women to result to a reclusive life. Smith, a self-proclaimed “doer and someone who is young at heart,” didn’t let it stop her active life, but her condition most definitely had the upper hand.
Smith suffered from stress incontinence, the more common of the two main types of incontinence. It causes the leakage of urine when a woman coughs, laughs or sneezes, and is a result of the weakening of the support structures of the urethra and bladder. continued>> |
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