How does OAB affect your sense of self?

I'm a joking person. I laugh a lot. So can you imagine? I'm laughing and coughing and sneezing and there it happens.

So the treatment was keep your emotions in check, because overexcited, your bladder's

going to get over excited. It's like, I felt like a zombie.

Hi everyone. I'm Patricia Geraghty, nurse practitioner and specialist in women's health. And I'm here today with Nikkie, Lynne, Veronica, and Brynn.

And we're talking about overactive bladder. How does it feel when someone says, you just went.

Oh, it's embarrassing. It really is. Especially if it's somebody that doesn't have a clue or understand.

And Nikkie, how about with you? How does it feel when someone says something like you have to go again? It's kind of hurtful that you have

to explain why you're having frequent visits to the bathroom.

Especially when you're my age. You know what I mean? I'm in my early 40s. I feel like sometimes, I should just wear a sign that says,

hey, I have overactive bladder. Sometimes it can get disheartening having to explain it over again, so I feel like I need

to have an overactive bladder intervention, and just bring everybody together and say, hey, this is why I'm always going to the bathroom.

I feel like I should just email everybody, saying, hey, when we have an outing-- because it affects

your daily life, in having to re-explain it all the time, it becomes disheartening.

It becomes frustrating. It becomes tiresome. Talking about our bladder function is not something most of us have to do

with either perfect strangers or new acquaintances. It really does ask a lot. Do you have sort of a 10 second, 15 second sound byte

that you use when you're explaining to someone about what's going on with you? Veronica? I say, listen.

It is what it is. It's like, this is who I am, this is what's happened. You take me or leave me. And you want to invite me, you don't want to invite me,

that's how it is. And you kind of make a joke out of it, and say c'est la vie. And Brynn, you have probably a lot of friends,

younger, young mothers, also. How do you explain to friends and even people

you don't know that well? I think most of my friends and family, everyone's pretty accepting. Like I said, they might tease a little bit,

that, oh, you have to go again? But it's not a big deal. Some of my friends also suffer from this problem as well.

So I kind of have a buddy to go to the bathroom with, because hey, I need to go. Great, I need to go as well. So my friends are really understanding,

and I like to find the friends that are a lot like me, we'll go together.