Edward - Urinary Frequency and Urgency
Edward is a 58-year-old senior Senior Executive who was retiring soon. He already planned out his perfect retirement. He worked hard enough. His job was stressful, however, he still loved it. But the thought of spending time in his house down South under the warm weather by the beach, and the thought of playing some golf and tennis whenever he wanted, was becoming more and more appealing.
But just like that, his perfect retirement plan shattered. His life quickly spiraled out of control. Edward was diagnosed with prostate cancer. The good news in this unfortunate event is that they caught it quite early. So his surgery went super well, and he soon started working with a pelvic floor physical therapist to regain his bladder control. Edward was very disciplined with his exercise program. Seven months after the surgery, he was able to stay completely dry and he started seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.
However, soon after, Edward started gradually developing this strong urge to urinate which was associated with a pain at his right lower abdominal region. He kept doing his Kegel exercises; however, the stronger he’d squeeze his pelvic floor, the worse the pain was, and the feeling of urgency. One thing he noticed though, which was different from the initial symptoms he had after the operation was that the pain and urge to pee he had only happened during sitting positions. The worse time for him was during his regular work meetings he had every morning where he had to sit for at least an hour. If he stayed active, the symptoms were much better. Initially, he thought there might be something wrong from his operation, so he booked a follow-up appointment with his urologist. But everything seemed fine after examination, and the urologist suggested to continue with physical therapy. Because his previous physical therapist went on maternal leave, he then came to my clinic.
During our initial conversation, I noticed that Edward looked distressed and kept looking at his watch. He told me that he was in pain and wanted to go to the bathroom even if he went just 20 minutes ago; a little bit of urine started coming out. I also noticed that Edward was sitting in a very slouched position. I, therefore, guided him to sit with a more erect posture by putting a little cushion behind his back. He immediately felt some relief. Given that he felt immediate relief by sitting into a more erect position, the root cause of his pain pointed towards his spine. I decided to load his spine to verify this hypothesis. I replaced the pillow with a soccer ball and asked him to bend his back repetitively against the ball to put some load onto his spine. A few minutes later, his pain and urge disappeared entirely. He was astonished. It seemed magical to him.
When I told him that this was his new exercise program, he said, "That’s it? It’s that easy? I have several grandchildren, and I can easily steal a ball from one of them". A week later, he no longer had his abdominal pain and urges when sitting, and he was no longer stressed about his daily morning meetings. I spoke to him one month after discharge, and he was very grateful for having his problem solved. The only complaint he had was that some people think he’s crazy for carrying a kid's soccer ball everywhere he goes to.
