In the pool with Gussy. Photo courtesy of Wellsprings K9.
As a child, I remember wetting my bed. I didn’t do it often, but I still have a clear memory of lying in bed after a terrifying dream or a dream where I think I’m sitting on a toilet and then the shock of waking up to the warm chill of wet pajamas and a soggy bed. I have vivid memories of the bathroom linoleum under my feet, the glare of the stark bathroom light, the icy washcloth in my mother or father’s hand, the smell of the fresh pajamas, and the feeling of clean sheets as they slid me back into bed.
I was never a chronic bed wetter, but the occasional times when it happened were enough to imprint long-standing feelings of shame. My parents never shamed me, they just methodically cleaned me up and put me back to bed, but still I learned early on that peeing in one’s bed or clothing was wrong. That, of course, didn’t stop it from happening as a child. Sometimes I wet myself after a fit of uncontrollable laughter or out of fear or when I waited too long and got stuck halfway to the bathroom and felt the warm humiliation trickle down my leg.
Once, when I was a teenager sent on a community ski bus up to the mountains for lessons, which I detested, I avoided the bathroom for long hours because it required fumbling with the layers upon layers of clothing my mother insisted I wear. Then, when I knew I had to go, but was neither close enough to the bathroom nor quick enough to drop my three layers of pants, I wet myself on the side of a very steep hill. At first, the warm sensation was a relief to the bitter windy cold of the mountain where I didn’t want to be in the first place, but the comfort was brief. Soon, the smell of urine overwhelmed me and my wet long underwear froze against my skin.
The bus ride home was interminable; my peers, none of who were my friends, sat as far away from me as they could.
Eventually my body and my common sense kicked in and the act of peeing in my pants became in impossibility. If I were swimming in the lake wearing my swimsuit I’d have a difficult time peeing in the water. Hiking in the mountains, squatting behind a tree or a boulder, I’d have to drop my drawers and wait for the longest time before my body would allow the function to happen naturally. My brain had learned and my body had complied, I must pee in a toilet with my pants down and my bottom bare.
Now, years upon years later, I have a new job, which requires that I wear a wetsuit for the entire length of my shift. I stand in a hydrotherapy pool for hours at a time helping injured and aging dogs recover muscle memory and tone by swimming in warm water and massaging them at the side of the pool. I love my job and despite the dryness of my chlorine skin, the bruised claw marks on my legs and arms, and the feeling that dog hair is permanently embedded in my nose, I can’t imagine working anywhere else or doing a different kind of work.
Until it comes time to pee. Sliding a wetsuit off and then back on takes time and I don’t have much between clients. So I invested in a wetsuit with a zipper that runs the full length of my crotch from my belly button to my lower back designed specifically to let me relieve myself. My boss calls them kinky pants, which they really are, but they serve an important function. They allow me to pee. Or so I thought. During my first 15-minute break between dogs in my new wetsuit I unzipped, squatted, and waited, but soon I found myself in a panic.
I had to go. I mean, I really, really had to go, but nothing came out. The pressure built and no matter how hard I concentrated, I could not pee. At first I thought something was wrong with me. A bladder infection. Kidney failure. A disease for which no scientist had conceived a name. Then I took off the wetsuit and I peed like a racehorse. Sweet relief. I put on my wetsuit, worked with another dog in the pool, and then once again made the attempt to pee using the handy zipper.
Torture. I could not pee. I breathed deeply. I tried to relax. Nothing. The pain was excruciating. What’s wrong with me? I thought. Why can’t I pee? Again, off with the wetsuit, racehorse time, and back on with the wetsuit to work with the last dog of the day.
“You’ve been conditioned to not pee in your pants,” my partner says later that night.
“But there’s a hole for me to pee out of,” is my response. “Why can’t I pee out of the hole?”
“Because your mind and body still sense that you have on pants and you haven’t peed in your pants in decades.”
There are so many processes where the brain takes over. Breath, heart, eyes, reflexes – functions that don’t need to be learned, but just are. Learning to pee in a toilet is learned. Diapers work up until then, but once you learn to pee in a toilet, there must be a neural pathway created that says, “Do not pee in you pants” and pretty soon, you can’t. Your brain won’t let you. There’s a communication block or an understanding that pants on means no peeing. Pants off – pee. Despite the little hole in my wetsuit, my pants are technically on. For all intents and purposes my brain can’t conceive of a hole in my pants as reason enough to release my bladder.
I kepy trying. By the third day, I’d figured out that I can pee in my wetsuit if I’m standing up, but that wasn't going to work for all sorts of reasons. Eventually, I sat on the toilet, the zipper unzipped, stretched my legs out to the side, leaned back on the toilet seat, took a deep breath, closed my eyes and willed every muscle in my body to relax.
Success. Ridiculous success. I’m rewiring my brain, I think, I’m rewiring my brain to be able to pee in my pants. To put aside all the shame and guilt and humiliation and allow myself the simple, convenient relief of peeing, though not technically, in my pants.
This will take some time.
