bowel problems

⚠️ Please read with care: This blog shares personal, sometimes painful experiences. My intention is to support and speak honestly not to harm. I’m not a professional, just someone who understands how hard it can get. If you're struggling, you're not alone please reach out for professional help.

MS doesn’t just make you trip over your own feet and forget why you went into the kitchen. It messes with the plumbing. Nerves that should quietly manage bladder and bowel signals suddenly turn into pranksters and the result is humiliation, pain, infection, and a daily game of “will I, won’t I?”

The Bladder Circus

What can happen:

Urgency: You go from “fine” to “I’m going to piss myself in 10 seconds” with no warning.

Frequency: You feel like you’ve been drinking beer all day, even if you haven’t.

Retention: The bladder doesn’t empty properly → infection factory.

Incontinence: The ultimate betrayal — leaks at random times.

Why: Nerves between brain, spine, and bladder are scrambled. It’s not “just drink less tea.” It’s wiring gone wrong.

The treatments (aka the patchwork quilt):

Catheters: From discreet intermittent sticks to full-time plumbing. Nobody tells you it can actually be liberating (less panic, more freedom).

Meds: Anticholinergics, beta-3 agonists — they can help, but often come with dry mouth, constipation, or zombie brain.

Botox: Not just for faces. Injected into the bladder wall, it calms spasms. Bonus: you get to tell people your bladder is fancier than their foreheads.

Lifestyle tweaks: Avoiding caffeine, alcohol, fizzy drinks, timed peeing. (Translation: giving up joy, but sometimes it helps.)

The Bowel Hellscape

What can happen:

Constipation: Weeks of nothing, pain, bloating, then the evacuation from hell.

Diarrhoea: The opposite. You live within sprinting distance of a toilet.

Incontinence: Accidents. Stains. Shame. The stuff people never talk about but everyone fears.

Why: Same reason as bladder — nerve signals scrambled. Plus fatigue means less movement, meds slow gut, diet gets wrecked.

The treatments:

Laxatives: Everything from gentle stool softeners to chemical warfare. Often trial and error.

Suppositories & enemas: The glamorous life.

Bowel training: Timed routines, diet tweaks, abdominal massage. Sometimes works, sometimes a joke.

Pelvic floor physio: Can help with both holding in and pushing out. But access on the NHS can be patchy.

Colostomy: The nuclear option. For some it’s actually a relief — predictable, controllable, no more humiliating accidents.

The Real Raw Truth

Nobody talks about it. Bladder and bowel problems are treated as shameful, so patients suffer in silence. But they’re some of the most disabling symptoms in MS.

Doctors often gloss over it. Unless you bring it up (awkwardly), it gets ignored. Yet infections from retention can cause relapses, hospital stays, even sepsis.

Impact is brutal. You can lose social life, intimacy, confidence, freedom. Fear of accidents dictates everything.

Cures don’t exist. Management does. Which means a constant balancing act between side effects, dignity, and practicality.

Humour helps. Laugh at it or drown in shame. Everyone’s got a story about public toilets, accidents, or catheters gone wrong. Talking about it takes the power back.

Dark Sarcasm Corner

Nurse: “Any bladder or bowel issues?” Me: “Only that they’ve staged a coup and I’m the hostage.” MS: “You wanted unpredictable symptoms? Hold my beer — oh wait, you can’t drink that anymore.”

Conclusion

Bladder and bowel problems with MS are not side notes — they’re daily battles. There’s no miracle cure, just messy workarounds. But if more of us talk about it openly, it kills the shame. These are not “bathroom problems.” They’re MS problems.

You’re not weak. You’re not dirty. You’re a human with broken wiring, trying to survive with dignity intact. And if that means Botox in your bladder or a colostomy bag named Bob, so be it.

I write in ink and fury, in breath and broken bone.
Through storm and silence, I survive. That is the crime and the miracle.
𐑢𐑨𐑑𐑒𐑣𐑧𐑮 𐑨𐑥𐑴𐑙 𐑢𐑨𐑑𐑒𐑣𐑧𐑮𐑕

It’s a lovely English morning by which I mean it’s grey, wet, foggy, and has all the charm of a forgotten Victorian asylum. The sort of weather that makes you feel like something wicked this way comes… probably dysentery.

But the real storm wasn’t outside. Oh no, that was merely atmospheric foreshadowing. The real chaos came from within, unleashed by my optimistic decision to try a “clean eating” article—free from gluten, dairy, sugar, joy, and apparently, sanity.

Reader, it lied.

What I ingested was not food, but an unholy catalyst a dietary Trojan horse packed with demonic forces. Within the hour, I was transformed from your friendly neighbourhood MS blogger into something between Linda Blair in The Exorcist and a firehose with feelings. Explosive vomiting? Check. The other end? Think Pompeii, but more intimate.

I spent the night oscillating between the porcelain throne and questioning my life choices. At one point, I was so violently ill that I swear I transcended my body. A full chakra-cleansing purge, complete with a hot shiver that rattled even the bits of me that are usually numb. You know it’s bad when you’re mid-vomit thinking: “Well, this is new.”

And now, in the aftermath, here I am wrapped in a blanket, scrolling through the digital madhouse formerly known as Twitter (now "X" because even the platform had an identity crisis). Everyone’s losing their collective minds over the NHS again, and I get it. Believe me, I get it.

Because while they all tweet, I get texts from my chemist like I owe them money and blood. “Your prescription is ready,” they say, as if it’s a treat. Last time, the robot in the pharmacy spat my meds out like an angry fruit machine, accused me of breaking it, and gave me someone else’s Drugs!. It’s a bit like Russian roulette but with fewer rules and more incontinence pads.

Doctors? Oh, I’ve had a few. Some good. Some gaslighters in lab coats. The kind who think if you’ve got long hair, a wheelchair, and a beard that says "I summon demons for breakfast", you can’t possibly have a brain worth listening to.

Case in point: my neurologist. Last seen alive eight years ago after I accidentally shattered his middle-class expectations. He took one look at me, as I rolled in with my biker cut and Electric wheelchair, and you could see his soul try to leave through his sphincter.

But here’s the plot twist they were wrong about me. I’ve taken control. I’ve gone alternative. My AI doesn’t lie, and it doesn’t sigh and look at its watch when I speak. I’ve sorted out my own care better than the revolving door of NHS disinterest ever did.

So yeah, rant over. Or rather, volume one concludes. Because the journey dear reader continues. And it’s paved with codeine, caffeine, and a healthy dose of "sod this for a game of soldiers."

Cheers.

                   “The views in this post are based on my personal     
                     experience. I do not intend harm, only honesty.”   

                         “By ink and breath and sacred rage, I write.
                               By storm and silence, I survive.”

                   @goblinbloggeruk -  sick@mylivinghell.co.uk

Let’s talk piss and shit. No frills. No sugar. Just the raw, soggy truth of what it’s like when your body declares independence from basic toilet protocols.

Bladder Hell: The Yellow Frontline Ah yes, the dreaded leak that moment you realise your trousers are no longer allies but soaking, complicit traitors. I was in my 40s when my bladder started acting like a temperamental toddler on a diet of Red Bull and rage. First it was the "can't pee" problem standing there like a statue, nothing but the occasional drip as if my urethra had stage fright.

Then came the grand reversal: involuntary leaks. And by "leaks," I mean a full-scale Niagara event, unprovoked and unapologetic. I tried everything. No drinks after 5pm. Strategic peeing. Mental negotiation. Nada. Still I’d wake up in a puddle like some pissy version of The Little Mermaid.

Doctors? Oh please. Gaslit for 40 years. "Well, you're getting older." "Try pelvic floor exercises." Mate, my pelvic floor is about as stable as a jelly trampoline.

But here's the kicker: you learn humility. You either cry about it or laugh darkly while rattling down the road in your three-wheeled piss trolley of doom, trailing a golden hue and existential dread.

The Brown Files: Tales from the Other End If the bladder doesn’t get you, your bowels surely will. MS gives you the delightful choice between constipation so hard it requires an exorcism, or the soft, sticky sneak attack that turns underwear into a crime scene.

Let’s break it down:

Numb arsehole? Check.

Dead rectal nerves? Of course.

Surprise poo party mid Tesco visit? You bet.

Walking like a guilty toddler trying to hide it? Standard.

Doctors again? "Try laxatives!" Yeah, thanks. Nothing like chemical napalm to turn your ring into the gates of Mordor. You want a real solution?

💡 Hydration. 💡 Diet. 💡 And a bloody bum washer.

That’s right. Stop sandpapering your crack with cheap loo roll. Install a bum washer attachment. Use aloe wipes, keep essential oils to hand, and for the love of whatever gods you follow, always carry spare underwear.

Because nothing screams confidence like shitting yourself in public and power walking with a face like you've seen God and he was laughing.

                       “The views in this post are based on my personal      
                        experience. I do not intend harm, only honesty.”   

                    “By ink and breath and sacred rage, I write.
                                By storm and silence, I survive.”

                        @goblinbloggeruk  -  sick@mylivinghell.co.uk