For many health issues – broken bones, joint pain, chronic headaches. women typically don’t hesitate to go to the doctor. But for other conditions, the embarrassment of sharing the not-so-pretty details of their health problems, especially those urological in nature, may keep them at home. Not only does this silence make difficult, if not impossible, for physician to offer effective treatment plan, it could put the patient’s life at risk. Some symptoms that women consider embarrassing can be signs of serious health issues.
Some indicators that could evidence of something far worse than just embarrassment include:
• Frequent or painful urination
• Blood in urine
• Post menopausal vaginal bleeding
• Stress incontinence
• Passing air or stool in urine
• Pain with sex
These could be symptoms of number of serious health conditions including interstitial cystitis, a urinary tract infection, ovarian cancer, bladder cancer, endometrial cancer or a fistula between bowel and bladder. Women can embarrassed to share that they suffer from involuntary loss of urine patients are even more hesitant to discuss fecal incontinence. It’s hard to enough discuss urine leakage, but when it comes to bowel leakage, most people are mortified. For example, Interstim, treatment option for urge urinary incontinence, is also treatment for fecal incontinence. If patient discloses she has both conditions, the doctor is more likely to suggest Interstim as therapy early on. On the other hand, if patient doesn’t mention fecal incontinence due to embarrassment, Interstim may not be offered unless other less invasive therapies have failed to address urinary incontinence.
Honest and direct communication benefits both patient and the physician. Talking about urological issues can be embarrassing but patients need to know they are not alone. To help facilitate conversation, we should encourage patients to write down their symptoms before their visit. We also provide bladder diary on our website that patients can fill out the prior to their appointments. That can really help the urologists understand the severity of the problem.
If there is one person with whom you shouldn’t be timid or bashful, it is your doctor. Sharing the details even the embarrassing ones allows for more specific treatment options, can eliminate unnecessary procedures and could just save your life.