2 weeks Ago By Miranda Levy
My life has been ruled by my bladder. But is it all in my head? And can I train myself to hold it in for longer? The experts weigh in. Earlier this month, I was faced with a familiar and knotty problem.
I had booked tickets to the theatre and discovered in advance that the performance was 90 minutes long, without an interval. An hour and a half, squeezed into a tiny and inescapable spot – from where it would be nigh on impossible to go to the loo. So I would be faced with my usual choice.
I would either sit, clenching away in an increasing amount of discomfort as my bladder began to fill and complain so much I couldn’t concentrate on the play. Or, the alternative: to make the leap and decide to go and relieve myself, causing a huge amount of clattering embarrassment as my row-members stood to let me pass and I stepped on toes and fell over bags, distracting the actors. Anticipating this scenario filled me with stress and concern.
This is nothing new. It recently occurred to me that my life has been ruled by my bladder. I go to the toilet a lot.
On family car trips, my parents would groan as I demanded to stop at yet another motorway service station. Even today, I always book an aisle seat on the plane and get antsy if the seatbelt sign takes too long to be switched off after take-off. I have suffered through interminable wedding ceremonies and describe long films as “one or two-loo-trip movies”.
(By the way, I vastly prefer the cinema to the theatre as you can get up without raising as much merry hell.) It’s a kind of an embarrassing problem – but the thing is, I know I’m not the only one who has to deal with this. Before the above play, my friend Lesley said to me: “90 minutes? I’d better not drink anything beforehand then.
” Just yesterday, I was delivering a presentation with a colleague who beat even me with four loo-trips in two hours. “Sorry,” she said. “I’m always like this.
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