Birgit Bulla - Home and Dry: Heal your bladder and improve your health

HOME & DRY

Birgit Bulla is a journalist who lives in Munich and works as a freelance editor for various magazines. Out of the blue in her mid-twenties, she developed an irritable bladder. The response to her blog, pinkelbelle.de, shows that shes far from alone. Today she knows everything about this part of the body, and it comes as no surprise: Bulla is, after all, the Latin word for bladder.

Rachel Stanyon has worked as a teacher and researcher in Germany and the UK, and is currently based in Australia, where she volunteers for the world literature journal Asymptote and works as a translator from German. She holds a masters in translation, and in 2016 won a place in the New Books in German Emerging Translators Programme.

Scribe Publications
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First published by hanserblau in Carl Hanser Verlag as Noch ganz dicht? Alles Wissenswerte ber die Blase in 2020
First published in English by Scribe 2022

Copyright hanserblau in der Carl Hanser Verlag, Munich 2020
Internal illustrations copyright Annette Bulla 2022
Translation copyright Rachel Stanyon 2022

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publishers of this book.

The moral rights of the author, illustrator, and translator have been asserted.

The advice in this book is not intended to replace the services of trained health professionals or be a substitute for medical advice. You are advised to consult with your healthcare professional with regard to matters relating to your health, and in particular regarding matters that may require diagnosis or medical attention.

Scribe acknowledges Australias First Nations peoples as the traditional owners and custodians of this country. We recognise that sovereignty was never ceded, and we pay our respects to their elders, past and present.

978 1 922310 81 1 (Australian edition)
978 1 913348 76 2 (UK edition)
978 1 950354 93 1 (US edition)
978 1 922586 47 6 (ebook)

Catalogue records for this book are available from the National Library of Australia and the British Library.

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CONTENTS

To Anyone with a Problem Bladder:

To Anyone with a Problem Bladder:

You Are Not Alone!

Ive been needing to go non-stop since I turned twenty-seven. Im one of those people who always wants the aisle seat at the cinema or on a plane. Im the person who dashes to the toilet for just one more quick pee before she leaves the house. The person with the irritable bladder. What does that mean? My bladder rules my life. It pressures me into going to the toilet every half hour and super urgently, too. It revs from zero to one hundred in seconds, like a Ferrari but one I cant brag about.

Sadly, its not that uncommon for bladders to go haywire. Urinary tract infections are the second most common illness to prompt women to visit a doctor, and experts now consider incontinence a common condition. But issues related to the bladder still dont get much attention, and many women and girls find them difficult to talk about. Why? Because of a lack of education.

In the meantime, though, a lot has been going on downstairs: books, articles and blogs have been getting to the bottom of our vaginas, explaining their qualities and quirks. Our periods have become an acceptable symbol of womanhood, which we celebrate with stylish and beautiful products. Hiding your loud, pink box of tampons in the bathroom before visitors arrive? So 2012. Accepting and celebrating the female body as it is hairs, dimples, discharge and all has never been as hot as it is now. Of course, this is fantastic for us and our vaginas. But what about our bladders? They continue to eke out a shy, anonymous existence, looking on enviously at the success of their colleagues.

In medical literature, the urinary tract is usually discussed from a male perspective. If you flick through urology textbooks, you can learn in great detail about why men have trouble going to the toilet. Spoiler alert: it often has something to do with the prostate. Which is of course super important, but only for men.

Why is it like this? Probably because medical research was designed around the male body from the very beginning. Did you know that scientists used to think women were just a smaller, more fragile version of men? In reality, there are physiological differences between the male and female body, and women often display completely different symptoms. This is especially true for the bladder. Even pop-science medical books you know, the ones mere mortals can understand are pretty bad when it comes to the female bladder. Wherever you look, you usually either come up against the prostate and the male urinary system again, or find books that instead focus on sex

So, its high time we paid the female bladder the attention she deserves. Did you know that it can be dangerous not to go to the toilet often enough? Or that infrequent urination might be telling you something about your psyche? What our bladder accomplishes in a day really is astounding.

I had never before looked at the human body as intensively as I did while researching this book. I pulled all-nighters on Internet forums. I spoke with all kinds of experts and pored over books that are usually only used by students swotting for their exams. These days, I almost think its a pity that I was too lazy to study medicine. (Ok, lets be honest: my marks werent good enough, either.) Perhaps I would have made a great urologist. But life as an editor which is my actual job, when Im not reading everything I can about the bladder is really pretty good, too.

A word of caution, though: this is not a medical textbook, and Im not a doctor, Im a patient. Im sharing my own suffering in this book, and I hope itll be like the friend that youd most like to have in the waiting room with you, the one who knows what youre going through and whom you can ask any question. Whats life like when you perpetually need to pee? What kind of doctor should you go to first, and what will happen there? What happens in examinations, which treatments are available and what do they feel like? Aside from this, I also want to point you in the direction of some possible solutions that doctors dont always offer. You might be able to contribute to your own health by thinking outside the box (or the bladder) and staying persistent.

Meanwhile, Ive had to go to the toilet three times since I started writing this

The Bladder and Its Co-Workers

The urinary tract is one of the sexiest organs we humans have. In terms of its anatomical structure, it basically looks like a sculpture, or a trophy youd be proud to put on your shelf. At the top sit two perfectly mirrored oval kidneys, each of which is connected by a delicate ureter to the bladder below. All this is rounded off by the funnel-shaped urethra, which, punctuated by the urethral sphincters, curves like a swans neck down to the bladder outlet.

Its charm and good looks havent gone to the urinary tracts head, though it doesnt think anything is beneath it. Its main areas of responsibility? Waste water treatment, temporary storage, protection and dispatch. It doesnt receive much attention for this, though as long as it does its work diligently and conscientiously, that is. Its only when they stop working properly that we start thinking about the bladder, kidneys and co.