Meet Ali, me+ Community Member

“I went from rock bottom to 3500 feet in the air.”

A helicopter ride over the Grand Canyon is enough to take anyone’s breath away. But for Ali, it marked a moment she’ll never forget. Unable to hear over the whirling engine, she and her husband were communicating by text.

“I said ‘Despite it all, no matter what life has thrown at us, we’ve got here – we’ve done this’,” she remembers. “It’s making me cry thinking about it. We just held each other’s hands and just looked at each other.”

12 years earlier, Ali was diagnosed with primary progressive multiple sclerosis. She struggled to accept she’d need a catheter. In part, she says, because as a nurse she was used to providing care – not receiving it.

“With nursing, you care for other people, but no one cares for you,” she says. “I had to reverse my role and that was difficult. I started using intermittent catheters about 8 years ago – I should have started before, but I was petrified. I didn’t want to admit to myself that something was wrong.”

Ali was suffering from urge incontinence and was given botulinum toxin injections to help. “It solved the problem of severe urge incontinence, but presented another,” she says. “I couldn’t void urine because it made everything tighten up so much. I didn’t want to use catheters, so I didn’t want the injections. That was when I hit rock bottom.”

Along with recurrent UTIs, episodes of leakages were becoming more common. “I was horrified I’d go to someone’s house on a job and sit on the sofa and leak.” The anxiety saw her become increasingly isolated from friends and family. Her cherished holidays and even day trips were becoming impossible.

"When you get to the point of no return, it's the only choice you have left. Then you think you've nothing left to lose. So, I decided it was time to start cathing."

Ali’s initial training to use an intermittent catheter was made easier because, as a nurse, she had a good understanding of the female anatomy. But the experience of being on the other side of the treatment table underlined the importance of the role a nurse plays – not just in teaching the physical aspects of catheterizing but caring for the emotional ones. “As a nurse, I’ve catheterized other people hundreds of times, but even for me, it was difficult to be doing it to myself in front of someone."

Over time, Ali says she has grown more confident in her ability to self-catheterise. Part of that improvement was finding GentleCath Glide™,  her current catheter. “Other catheters can look nice but are too small and difficult if, like me, you’ve got reduced dexterity in your hands. And other catheters had lots of sticky lubricant I didn’t like the feeling or idea of.”

For Ali, the ability to confidently self-catheterize has not just improved her continence and UTI problems but opened a new lease of life. “Looking back to our trip to the States, I can’t believe we did it,” she says.