Patient Testimonial

Nicole, 36, stay-at-home mother of two girls, ages 20 months and four years old.

Being a mother is arguably the hardest job there is. Add to it having a disorder that prevents full bodily function and the job is even tougher. In order to properly take care of a child a mother needs to be healthy and able to fully function in everyday life.

Nicole, a 36 year-old mother of two young girls, learned first hand how a disorder can affect quality life as a mom. After a difficult delivery of her 11 pound baby, Nicole's pelvic floor was no longer the same. She suffered from both fecal and urinary incontinence. Her lifestyle changed drastically. She constantly worried about leakage while walking her dog and she had to make sure she had an extra pair of underwear and moist wipes on hand at all times. This was mentally frustrating. Nicole felt very insecure about her health problems and did not feel comfortable being intimate with her husband as a cause of this.

After about a year of failed attempts to regain bowel control on her own, Nicole followed her instinct and decided to seek professional help to get her life back. When asked what she was looking for in a health professional, Nicole stated: "I wanted someone who not only was an expert in this field, but who also had good bedside manner. It was important to me to find a doctor who had a good personality and described things in a matter-of-fact way." Nicole did her research and decided to seek help from Tracy Hull, MD, a colon and rectal surgeon at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation.

Nicole soon learned that the pelvic muscle exercises (Kegels) she was performing were not helping to rebuild her pelvic floor because of the great amount of torn muscles in her rectum. She decided to have two surgeries, a rectal sphincteroplasty for her fecal incontinence and an implantation of a sling for her urinary incontinence. "I noticed a difference in my bowel control almost immediately and the recovery was easier than the recovery from childbirth," stated Nicole.

Physical therapy is needed for Nicole to gain full control of her bladder and bowel movements but she already feels that she has gotten her life back. Her advice to anyone living with the same problems is to find a healthcare professional who has had a lot of experience in the field of incontinence and to know that lose of bladder and/or bowel control is not normal and that there are solutions for these problems.