Assistant teacher Rachel Ingram, 31, has been unable to pee for nearly five years. At first, she didn’t think much of the situation, but after giving birth to her daughter Isla in October 2012 and not being able to urinate, she realized how serious it was.
After being treated urgently at the hospital, she discovered that she already had 2 liters of urine accumulated in her bladder — the organ usually has the capacity to store only 300 ml to 500 ml.
“The doctors didn’t know what was wrong with me, they hadn’t seen it before,” he told British tabloid Metro UK.
Rachel says she was in “absolute agony” and that she looked “six months pregnant” due to the accumulated fluid. Doctors emptied his bladder and discharged him without diagnosis.
Years passed and the woman continued to be unable to pee. She even heard from professionals that she was too young to have bladder problems and that she should “sit in the bathroom and turn on the faucet” to try to encourage urine to come out. But nothing worked.
Until 2015, Rachel used a catheter (flexible tube) to artificially empty her bladder — one end is inserted into the urethra and the other end empties urine into a drainage bag.
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However, in April of that year, she finally arrived at a diagnosis, after going through a consultation in the private network: Fowler syndrome.
The condition is characterized by a retention of urine or an inability to urinate normally and typically affects women in their 20s and 30s. It can cause discomfort when walking and in the lower abdomen.
With the diagnosis, in May 2015, Rachel was fitted with a sacral nerve stimulator — a kind of pacemaker to better control urination. After a fall, the device came out of place.
After spending time without being able to urinate again, the woman underwent surgery to remove the device and try a new form of treatment: mitrofanoff.
The procedure uses part of the appendix to form a channel between the bladder and the abdominal wall, through which the patient passes a catheter to drain the urine.
Rachel describes the first six months of fitting in with mitrofanoff as “hell”.
“I was so bad that I ended up with a blood clot in my leg and several infections in my chest, my body was so weak and drained – I didn’t think it was going to get better,” he recalled.
However, today, after adapting to the method, he reconsiders. “[O procedimento] gave my life back, I had no life, I didn’t want to be here. I didn’t think it was fair to my family, but now they’ve got me back.”
“My life is completely different: I’m back at work, I graduated to be a teaching assistant and started doing gymnastics”, he celebrated.
