“Am I going to be heard here?” How to Advocate for Yourself and Get the Care You Deserve

The following transcript was generated electronically. Please let us know if you see any transcribing errors and we’ll get them corrected immediately. 

Bruce Kassover:  A young Marine. Years of frustration. More than a dozen procedures. And finally, hope. Join us today for a powerful conversation with a patient and a physician about perseverance, self-advocacy and how to talk to your doctor about things that you may be afraid to discuss with even your closest confidante. 

Welcome to Life Without Leaks, a podcast by the National Association for Continence. NAFC is America’s leading advocate for people with bladder and bowel conditions, with resources, connections to doctors, and a welcoming community of patients, physicians, and caregivers. All available at nafc.org. 

Welcome back to another episode of Life Without Leaks. I’m your host, Bruce Kassover, and joining us as always is Sarah Jenkins, the executive director for the National Association for Continence. Welcome, Sarah. 

Sarah Jenkins: Thank you, Bruce. I’m so glad to be here. 

Bruce Kassover: Yeah, me too. Today, we have a really great lineup because rather than just speaking with either a physician or a patient, we are speaking with both a physician and a patient at the same time. We have with us Dr. Jannah Thompson, and she is a board-certified urogynecologist and urologist with Trinity Health West Michigan, and she practices with an emphasis on things like pelvic organ prolapse, overactive bladder, fecal incontinence, a whole range of bladder and bowel disorders. So Dr. Thompson, welcome. Thank you for joining us again.

Dr. Thompson: Thank you for having me. I enjoy these.

Bruce Kassover: Oh, we do too. We always love having you on. And today, we have somebody who’s new to the podcast. Morgon is joining us. He is a patient who’s gonna be helping us understand some things from a patient perspective, because that’s something that, I think most of our listeners are really primarily interested in. So Morgon, thank you for joining us today as well. 

Morgon: Bruce, I appreciate being here, and hopefully I can provide some value to those that are listening. I know it’s always easier to listen to those that are going through the exact same thing that others are going through. So hopefully I can do that, and I’ll do my best to be as open and honest about it as possible.

Bruce Kassover: We appreciate that. And really that openness and honesty is probably the most important thing because so many people are just uncomfortable, ashamed, afraid to discuss these things. So like you’re saying, the more we can get people to feel comfortable discussing these issues, the more people are gonna get help. So we really do appreciate that candor that you’re gonna be sharing with us.

The object of this podcast today is really to empower patients, so that they can make the most of their doctor appointments and give them some practical, actionable, insights and tools so that they can communicate clearly and get the results that they’re looking for.

Maybe that’s a good place to start. Morgon, from a patient’s perspective, when we talk about what a successful doctor’s appointment looks like, to you what is that? What happens to make an appointment a successful one? 

Morgon: I think it starts with you. Being able to go in there and be safe enough with yourself. ‘Cause not all the people, not all positions are gonna make you feel comfortable. That’s just not the reality of the world today, right? But one thing is true, if you can’t tell them what’s wrong, they can’t tell you how to make it right or help you change those symptoms , right? And so I think there’s a level of vulnerability that you need to walk into that door with before you even get there.

Because if I can’t tell you what’s wrong, how are you going to give me the tools or suggest tools that may be able to help me out in the future that may, even if it’s the wrong thing. I’d rather you say, “Let’s try this,” and then, and that, that’s checking off the box, that didn’t work. And that’s what went through with me.

And so it was the ability to go through those steps and be comfortable with that. So I think the first thing you need to do is be comfortable with yourself and know that not, and this is my personal opinion, not saying that is acceptance of what you have, right? I believe that you need to speak up if you want change to happen for you.

Bruce Kassover: I can appreciate that. But I can also appreciate that what’s easy for one person is very difficult for another person. And I’m wondering, some of it comes down to personality and experiences and things like that. Maybe you could tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got to be here today.

And your outlook and whether or not you’re the sort of person who tends to be a very open person, or if this was, you had to, really, struggle to come out of your shell a little bit. 

Morgon: Yeah. So I would answer, first I’m, I need to reply to the first thing you said.

And you said some people are different, right? And some people have a harder time doing hard things, right? But hard things still need to be done to fix that lifestyle, right? You, if I would ask that person and say, “Hey, isn’t what you’re going through hard?” Yes. So you need to do something else hard to try to work through that piece.

And that’s where I came into play, right? And so transitioning to me being a United States Marine, right? And- I think I was like 22, 23, somewhere in that area, when it first started happening to having the bladder issues, having to go, the frequency and all the different medications and the procedures and stuff and and it w- it took courage because at first I thought nothing was wrong. And because I was so used to not sharing vulnerable information with others, because in the Marine Corps they teach you to share less, right? In the environment, one, it’s terrorism, security, and all kind of other things. So you don’t share PII or information or medical information. They tell you not to, and they really hammer that home. And so as a young person coming into a organization like that, you don’t know what to give to other people. And so I held onto it until I couldn’t anymore. That’s when I passed out at work because I wasn’t sleeping, because I was going to the restroom every 15, 20 minutes, right?

And so there was no choice, and then I had to say, “Okay, this is what’s happening to me.” But even then, the only person I really told was the person that needed to know, probably, the person over me, and then the doctor themselves. And it was very important. I was really reluctant in my position to tell my leadership because the way we, especially United States Marines, we are the best of the best, right?

And so that means there are no flaws, there are no weaknesses, there… and anything that takes you out the fight, we consider a weakness, right? And we know the one thing you do, you tell them that something’s going on, they’ll help you. But now you won’t be effective at deploying, going to the field, training, all the things that Marines do to be Marines, right?

America’s 911. And so I had to build up enough courages and take the chances because they wasn’t, they weren’t going to understand how many appointments I was gonna have if I didn’t say anything. And they always say, you can keep your personal information to yourselves, even in the military.

But how can a leadership support what you need if you can’t tell them where you’re at? And that doesn’t mean you tell everybody. That tells you it’s a need to know basis type thing, right? Now I’m different. I’m a little bit older. I don’t really care who would know. We can tell everybody ’cause I do believe in sharing that, that piece, and it took me a long time to keep going to that.

I always tell a story ’cause when I went to the doctor for the first time and I sat down, and I’m sitting there, this 20-year-old Marine, and like, all my life is just fitness. That’s all we do is fight, run, fight, run, work. You know what I mean? And them days, drink, getting that crazy as Marines. And I sit down in this room at the urology clinic, and I’m like the youngest person there.

Everybody has gray hair, right? And they either got canes or walkers, and I’m like, “I ain’t supposed to be here.” They’re telling me about things that they’re going through, and we got similar things, and it’s not the same. That doesn’t feel good, right? It makes me feel less than, because I’m supposed to be the elite of the elite.

Why am I here? And sitting down with that was really hard. It was a large transition from that. But as… I think it’s just as long as that road has been for me, over time you just start to let it go. That wall gets chipped down, and then you start to see what it looks like when you don’t say anything, right? You you slow down that process. 

Dr. Thompson: I think that’s why it’s so important to hear patients’ stories, because you have to hear it from someone who’s like you or has a similar story to you. And you’re right, age, gender, race, all of those things play a role in feeling like, “Am I gonna be heard here? Is there anybody that’s experiencing this like I am?” You feel like you’re the only one. At least I hear that a lot from patients. And so I can imagine that was terrible feeling to go in as a 20-something-year-old and, the average age in a urology office is north of 60.

Morgon: Yeah. And it was, and that’s how what got me is I started watching videos and they started giving me more tools that I could use. But to your point, you was like, you feel like you’re the only one. I didn’t know it was a thing.

Overactive, what is overactive bladder? ‘Cause like in the Marine Corps, what do they tell you? Drink water, right? And they got the little urine charts everywhere. And so you always trying to get to the clear ’cause you done made it when it’s like a win-win when you get to the clear.

And, but what does that do? Because they… One thing I learned is like hydration is not just water, it’s like also, the building blocks of electrolytes, right? It’s those things, too. And, but you don’t know that, right? And then you don’t know drinking all that water does such to you, or A or B or C.

But you do it and then you just get used to going to the bathroom all the time. But then you don’t really… When I got out the first time, probably the first day that it probably happened, it just, it didn’t show itself slowly. It just was like bam. And it’s man, I’m thinking I just drinking too much water.

So what do I do? Stop drinking water. Now we going down a whole nother road, right? So it’s just like the lack of education that I had at that point. And not only even with me, it’s like just the people that were able to give me advice, like that didn’t exist. That was like ’03 or something like that, ’03, ’04.

Like they, I’ll go in there, they’ll tell me, it’s “We we don’t really know what’s going on, but here, try this. Here, try this.” Yeah. “Here, try this.” But they didn’t know what was going on with me. They didn’t know what was going on with my body. They didn’t know what was going on with the, what do they call them? The samples that they were providing. ‘Cause they didn’t know nothing either, they just had been given samples by somebody else, the salesman, said, “Try this out, see what your patients like it,” but no one knows that. So you take the leap and you go through what you gotta go through to get it done, and you can just hope and wish that somebody, the next appointment you go to, they tell you something different.

And I tell you, I may I did probably six, seven different doctors. ‘Cause when you deploy I gotta switch over. People leave, and military doctors they on a deployment cycle or a moving cycle as well. And so I’ve had multiple doctors, and I went through the same thing every time. Nobody knew.

When you talk about trying to make me feel, even make myself feel like you talk about doing hard things. If everybody else is unsure and they’re supposed to know, I don’t feel really confident, man, I’m, like, I, I’m effed up. I don’t, it’s never gonna get any better.

I’m gonna have to live with this the rest of my life. Even I think about it to, to this day, it’s like when I get older when it’s gonna be harder for me to hold it ’cause it’s, ’cause I’m getting older, if I’m already going this frequent and I’m 47 years old or 20 years old and I’m physically able to do, the question is where do I put myself in a diaper? ‘Cause I might not be able to make it. Yeah, I don’t like how it feels even talking about it, actually. 

Sarah Jenkins: Morgon, I know things were different then and there weren’t quite as many treatments available as there are now, but still, I think a lot of people experience what you experienced even now because maybe they don’t know what’s available, or maybe their doctor or primary care physician doesn’t totally know the market or what’s out there.

Can you offer any advice for folks who are maybe struggling and feel like they’re hitting that brick wall and not knowing what to do next ? How do you overcome that and get, finally find a treatment that worked for you?

Morgon: I started to speak up. That was the big one because I was going to the doctor and then we would go through the same regimen. Then go to another doctor, we go through the same regimen. And whatever the protocol is, and I’ve learned now that it’s, there’s a certain thing that they have to do to make the insurance and do all that, but there’s also things that we can say to just to, off topic on topic, I have a sleep apnea machine and sometimes I, it took me a whole week just to let them do their job, and they kept telling me to wait, but I know I don’t have to wait ’cause I’m a patient.

And so I asked the right questions. I wanna talk to your supervisor. This is what’s happening. This is what you’re affecting. Then they have to do something. They can’t just leave you out there, right? But not many people do that. Like even with my, when I was in the military, because of that lack of knowledge, I would go to the doctor’s appointments with them because they didn’t know the questions to ask.

And so I would say ask more questions and see the patterns in your visits, right? What’s happening? Is the needle moving? If it’s not moving, then, and I always tell people this just like law, medicine is a practice. Just because you go there doesn’t mean they know everything. You may be the first case they’ve ever had, and so if that’s the case, then that doctor may… If you wanna take that journey, don’t blame it on nobody. Just go through the journey. But if you looking for answers then you need to get to the person that has had more experience actively, and I say that very, ’cause I’ve had some older doctors, they were like, they’ve been doing it for a while, but they didn’t know anything new because they been doing it for a while, if that makes sense, right?

And so it’s being able to ask the questions, find the patterns so you can keep moving your needle forward to feeling better or at least minimizing the impact that it has on your life. And when you do that, then you’ll sit there, you get to the doctor and you’ll say, instead of walking in there and say, “Oh I’m here to see you,” and then they do the physical, then they hand you the samples and they say, “Come back in a week, and then we can do it again.” I’ll say, “Hey, this is what I’ve been through. This is the, these are the medicines that I’ve had. This is how they affected me. I would not like to try anything if it’s not, if it’s not something different than what it is,” period. 

Dr. Thompson: That’s really important, Morgon. Obviously this is after years of you- 

Morgon: Yeah

Dr. Thompson: kind of you hitting your head against a brick wall, and you’ve developed this savviness. But I resonated with the word “pattern,” ’cause I think doctors think in patterns. And so I think it’s, what you’re saying is very helpful. If you can, A, determine what your most bothersome complaint is before you come in. If it’s leaking, you don’t know what type, fine, it’s leaking. It… And then just having an awareness of patterns. When is it happening? Is it related to anything you’re doing? Is there anything you’re eating or drinking that makes it worse? Is there, Did it happen after a certain event in your life? Timing, all of those pattern questions, that’s really helpful to give that information.

And I think, again, keeping track of things you’ve tried, particularly if you’re seeing a new provider, is really helpful so you’re not repeating treatments that you’ve had before, right? If you’ve tried, if you tried a bladder medicine five years ago and it didn’t help, if you have some recollection of even trying it, even if you don’t remember the name, maybe you know that it didn’t work or that you had a side effect from it, it’s really helpful.

Because as you alluded to, there are restrictions based on, or again, steps often that you have to follow for insurance coverage. And a lot of that you’re talking about is what we have to have documented. Documented what you’ve tried, what’s happened, what hasn’t worked. But I like the idea of, hey, if this is the same thing I’ve done before, I don’t want to do it, I want to do something different.

Morgon: I want to do something different, man. Yeah. And you get… And I’ll say, and I’ll say it since we, I’m speaking to patients today, but I think that’s what the whole point of this is like you will feel like, man, maybe it’ll work this time. You will have that feeling. But you also have to be honest with yourself and say, if there’s a possibility there’s something new, because new means more development, right? We, like, where the whole point when I first got seen, I… Technology around this is totally different today. The medicine is around it is, the medication is totally different than today. And right? And so you will have those feelings, but you have to have the courage, that means doing something anyway even though you’re scared, right?

Have the courage to try something different. And the moment it’s not working for you, for me it’s, I’ll tell you the number one thing I never will try again is the patch. That ain’t never happening, right? ‘Cause it just, I had so many negative side effects from that. There’s nothing you can do to convince me, “Oh, it’s a new thing, it’s…”

No. I’m out. I’m okay. And so you gotta, you have to, what I always tell people, say, “you gotta go to, you gotta go through it to grow through it,” right? And so you have to have these experiences to, like you said, ,for me to get savvy on it. But the key is what I see people do, and I, what I did, is just go there and expect them to tell me how to fix it, right? You have to be involved in your treatment. You have to be involved in the process, because guess who knows you better than you? No one.

And so you have to share that information with the provider so they can give you the best possible information that they have to provide you, right?

And then learn. Learn with them, right? Have the conversation. And that’s where my life changed. When I got to a provider that was willing to “I don’t know much about this,” but she went back and she, she found the information. Now she does it for a living. But it took me a whole lot to get to that point.

Bruce Kassover: Morgon and Dr. Thompson, I hear you talking about sharing and communicating and, just how important it is. And I’m wondering a little bit about the sharing and the communicating process because, if you read journal articles and, you talk to physicians, like when physicians talk to physicians, they have a very specialized, complex vocabulary that doesn’t often mean a lot to a patient but is, is helpful for describing conditions and treatments and things like that.

And Dr. Thompson, I’m wondering, what is the best way to get a patient to explain their symptoms to open up and share about what they’re experiencing so that you can actually deliver the sort of help that they need? 

Dr. Thompson: I think there’s two parts to that I would want to communicate is one, I think as Morgon is alluding to, you have to push past that discomfort of embarrassment, and know that your doctor’s probably heard worse, and that just like a mechanic looking under a hood or the dentist looking in your mouth, if I’m looking at your genitals, that’s my work environment.

And that is very embarrassing to most people to think about. And often patients will say, “Why do you want to do this?” Or, “I can’t believe you do this,” almost like I drew the short straw, but I chose to do this, right? This is my work environment. So to me, if we’re talking about pee and poop, that is my normal workday.

And so it’s not to minimize the embarrassment. It’s not to minimize the privacy of it. It’s just that I see the human body clinically, professionally, without judgment. And so what feels vulnerable to you, the patient, is just simply my area of work. And I don’t know if that helps, but I would want more patients to look at it that way.

And us as physicians, our job isn’t to judge, though unfortunately, there are doctors you’re going to come across that judge or that aren’t helpful. But our job is to diagnose. And so if you minimize your symptoms and you can’t truly be honest, that can lead to misdiagnosis and wrong treatment.

So for instance, let’s say you go to the hairdresser and you’re wanting a change. You’re just like, “I want a change.” But you don’t tell the hairdresser that you chemically straightened your hair two weeks ago. You could have a very bad outcome, right? If they use color, et cetera. Or maybe another way to think of it is you go to the mechanic and you say, I’ve heard this funny noise,” but you don’t bother to tell him that you also smell burning, right?

So, again, I don’t even want you to give me the terms. The terms are what I need to use to communicate to other physicians in the medical chart. I just want to know what your symptoms are, what you’re experiencing, what does it feel like. And the more you can describe that and give me an example of a situation in which it happened, that is where I can, again, recognize patterns and come up with a diagnosis.

That will lead to maybe further questioning. “Hey, tell me more about this,” or, “Does this ever happen?” But again, that honesty and just trying to push past that discomfort, knowing that I chose to do what I do and chose to see the types of patients that I see ’cause that’s what I wanna do hopefully is helpful.

Bruce Kassover: I’d like to hear a little bit more about your practice actually, and maybe how you got to be here. Because I do think that’s such an important area of concern. That, that, that’s one of the things that really prevents people from seeking the help, that, seeking help that can make a real difference for them, is that they’re just embarrassed.

They don’t wanna show anything to people. They don’t wanna talk about these things that are super personal. And I’d love to hear a little bit more about how you say that this is what you do and this is, just par for the course for you. And, people are concerned that they’re unique, they’re special.

You know what? Everybody is unique to themselves, right? Everybody is special to themselves. What sort of range of patients do you see so that the people can understand that they’re not the only ones going through this? You know, somebody like a, a Marine in his 20s is, and who is, like you said like Morgon was saying, in the waiting room, “I don’t see myself there.”

 Maybe tell us a little bit about that, about, the sorts of patient profiles that really do need your services. 

Dr. Thompson: Yeah. I think that now with social media, that Morgon wouldn’t have had back in his early 20s, people are a little able, better able to hear patient stories, to hear, see themselves.

But, my, my profession is a subspecialty within urology. And so I had to seek out wanting to gain extra knowledge, extra surgical skills, extra diagnostic abilities to treat the patient groups that I see. I chose to leave sort of general urology, in which I was seeing men and women, and just focus on my subspecialty, which is seeing women with pelvic conditions.

So that’s anything from women that leak urine, women that leak stool, women that have prolapse, where something’s falling out or coming out of the body. That’s treating pelvic pain. That’s treating recurrent infections, usually as part of other diagnosis. Pain can involve pain with intercourse. It can involve changes that happen to the tissue in that area without estrogen.

So those would be the main things that I see. And just like Morgon said, I see women from 20s to 100-something. But the vast majority of my patients are somewhere in the 60s, 70s, 80s range. But there are people at both ends that experience these problems. And I have seen women in their 30s with prolapse. I’ve seen women in their 80s with prolapse. And I think making sure that if your primary care physician is sending you to someone, I think it’s okay to say, “Have you sent other patients there?” Or what, background does this person have? Or maybe do a Google search on what expertise they have.

There’s so many things out there now to determine if the person that you’re being sent to may have different credentials than the last person you saw with it, or might be a place where you would feel comfortable. And I think it’s okay to ask your primary care physician, “Why are you sending me to this person? What do you know? What experience have you had with other patients?” Maybe that would help with the comfort level of going and just knowing that your primary care trusts that person or has had an experience with that person. 

Bruce Kassover: That makes a lot of sense. And yeah certainly I would hope that people would actually, take action on it. Morgon, this has me thinking. You mentioned earlier how you found yourself sitting there and you felt, ” I’m not the sort of target audience for this set of services.” And I’m wondering something a little more personal than that even.

You were… you talk about how you’re a Marine. And there’s this image I would imagine the Marines have of themselves also personally as being, the… they’re tough. They’re strong. They don’t show weakness. And I’m wondering, as somebody who’s young, maybe tell us a little bit about when your symptoms started, and how you realized they were a problem, and what did that mean to you? How did you reconcile that as somebody who is supposed to be outwardly and inwardly strong with, recognizing, you know what, “I need help. This is a problem.” How did you balance that and come to the conclusion that, hey, I really do have to go get help? 

Morgon: Man, I didn’t figure that out ’til years later. And it was crazy. I had to get a lot more mature before I really… and that, I don’t think age has anything to do with it. It was, like, I had a lot more life experiences that had caused, that, that forced me to be a little bit more vulnerable, right ?

Some introspection kinda going through. But young Marine, I’ve always, for lack of a better word, been a badass. That’s just, that’s why I joined the Marine Corps. I didn’t want to be in the Army. I wanted to be… When you see Marines, you can put the Army and the Marine together, who get the most attention?

It’s just, we see it in… And that’s what I saw in high school when the recruiters came. The Army guy was like, yeah, he was cool, right? And I think it was National Guard, but it was the same Army uniform. And then I seen the Marine, and he was different. Dress blues, right? And I was like, i’m the best, so I should be joining the best,” right? And I’ve always excelled in my career because I never, I don’t like minimum. I never, like the Marine Corps, we have a fitness test. It’s this is the minimum, this is the maximum. I couldn’t, and I even to this day, I don’t know what the minimum is, ’cause that’s not how we work, right? We’re trying to achieve more. I was always told whatever the standard is, exceed it, period. And so with that being said, that means that I was doing things that the normal person, even in the Marine Corps, there’s still the basic guy, whatever you did, I needed to exceed that.

And right? And the, and that means that physically I had to be a specimen. That’s the easiest way to put it, right? And that’s, if you see most military special forces guy they are the picture perfect thing. And I’m this, fast running, strong guy , six foot two muscular, and there’s nothing I can’t do, and I exude excellence when I walk in.

And they, and I say all those things because that’s what they tell you from the day you walk into the door, and they ingrain and indoctrinate you into it, right? And so you become, it’s like you do things without thinking because the whole thing is about sending us back into society better people.

And that’s what I did. And so I really, I drank the Kool-Aid heavily. And so I worked out a lot. Working out a lot means I drank a lot of water. I ran all the time. Being in Japan or other hot places, Kuwait or whatever, you’re always drinking. And so I got to a point where I was always working out, and I just was going to the bathroom a lot.

And I was like, man, I just drink a lot of water. And then so I don’t think it really hit me until that day in my office and I passed out because I wasn’t sleeping, and I hadn’t been sleeping for like weeks because I was going to the restroom so much. And I, and you’re just like, I can get a hold of this. I’m gonna make the adjustments. And I drink less water, which at that time I didn’t know it was make, I could just hurt, I could hurt myself, hurt my bladder, my kidneys, all kinds of other stuff, right? And not really be effective in training. Become a safety violator basically.

Put everybody el- else at risk because I can’t do something, and that’s when it sparked for me. When I passed out and I didn’t know what was wrong, that scared the hell out of me. I don’t I don’t… Man, I can’t remember going to the doctor before then. I actually, other than the basic stuff.

And now to, to this point I’ve had over 15 procedures, and with that piece, it’s just okay, what do I do from here? And so being naive, it’s okay, I’ll just go to the, the medical and they’ll tell me and they’ll give me some stuff, maybe some Motrin. Give me some Motrin, they gonna just go fix everything. Because up to that point, that’s how life had been for me, with medical-wise. We go here, we do a thing, I do the thing, I get better. And then I went somewhere and they was like… I remember the first place I went, it was the hospital at Fort Leavenworth. So I was stationed in Kansas City when this happened. And that’s my hometown, but I was stationed there. And I went there, and they was like, “I don’t know. We gotta send you elsewhere out in town.” They send me out in town, KU Medical Center. He was like, “I don’t know.” They did all the procedures and medicines, and then they sent me somewhere else. An older guy, he’s he’s been handling it for a long time. He was like, “I don’t know, and I’m not sure if anybody else will know.” And he, I think he diagnosed me with interstitial cystitis. And I still don’t know what that is ’cause I can’t spell it, and then I just got to a point, it was like they sent me to Japan, and then I got there, and this is where I started learning the system.

They sent me to Japan. There was no specialist for the needs that I had, so they Medevaced me back to the States, which was a whole ‘nother… I had just got there. I had moved. I was married at the time. I had to move all my stuff to Japan, and then I went back to the States to Balboa Hospital to see a doctor, right?

And they say, “You shouldn’t be in Japan. We’re not letting you go back.” What? Hold on. I hadn’t even been there three months. And it if military moves that’s a evolution in itself. It takes a year just to get somewhere else, and they start telling me the severity of what I was going through.

Then they started taking me through all these procedures. Always somebody playing with your butt or are you having issues with your prostate or here, put this, the hose in here. Let me cut your bladder. You might not be able to have kids. You start, what? Hold on. It’s like this spiral. Everything, they start telling you all the things that can go wrong, and ain’t nobody saying what’s gonna go right. People do Botox now. I remember when they first told me about it, they was like we do it, but we’re not sure how you…” I don’t want… Why would I say, ‘Oh, yeah, that’s, that sounds great”?

I’d rather you, do a knee surgery. That’s more common than anything else, and it still sucks, and so it just, I got to the point where I got tired, man. I got tired. It felt in the Marine Corps, like somebody else had control of my career, and it was hard for me to do a lot of things.

And within that process, I remember when I wanted to go to Afghanistan, and the people that are listening to this might be like he wanted to go?” Yeah, all Marines would want to go. If your brother and your sister’s going, you’re going too. I’m gonna be there for you. And I got…

That was one thing that I wasn’t deployable because I need a special… Hell, I can’t even go to Japan. Why am I gonna go to a combat zone that has no hospitals, right? And so I remember going over there and not telling. I would say the doctor, I just didn’t, I didn’t even bring it up. I had to get a medical screening. I didn’t even bring it up. I’m retired now, so they can’t do nothing. But, and I went over there, but that was challenging. Like that, that in it, that in itself because I remember being we… ‘Cause there’s never… You’re, when you’re deployed there, you’re n- you’re not on your own time.

You’re on Zulu time or combat time. That’s the easiest way to put it in civilian terms. And that means things happen in a certain way, or things don’t happen in a certain way. So, and you never know where you’re gonna be, when they’re gonna tell you to move, right? And then if people that have gone, that are listening to this may have gone through some things, they probably do a lot of planning now, right? Because you control your life, but in the military, you don’t control your life. And the one bigger issue is like when you go to they have large bases, they’re called FOBs, forward operational bases , and then they have little bitty FOBs that are out in the middle in combat somewhere.

And guess what? If you go out at night and the base is like dark, that means there’s no lights on the base because if the light is on, you can get shot obviously, right? And so there’s no light on the base. It’s like red lenses. The bathroom is on the other side of the compound.

If I gotta go every 15 minutes, like, that don’t work. And so that’s when we start using the big mouth Gatorades, right? And Gatorade bottles, and you have to figure it out. And it’s almost, and for lack of a better example, so it’s almost like hiding a pregnancy. If people pay attention, they see what you’re doing, they see what you’re going through, right?

But you, for some reason, you think nobody else can see it. You know? And then until it, and then over there it started to affect me, and they were like, I need to go to the bathroom during a brief. And if you’re in a brief, sometimes you’re locked in because it’s secret. And then they’re like, “You can’t go.” And I have to explain to them, I have to go. “We’re not letting you go.” And then I have to now break it down to people that I didn’t really want to share it with. And I got many stories about it, man, and it just, you just get to a point where you are, you have — I’m happy at this point in my life that I’ve seen things and continue to move forward in this space that I’ve learned more, and that I had the right people. I, even being on this call, that means I was, I got affected by the right people to be in a certain place. Some people don’t have those privileges that I have. Some people don’t have the personality I have to say things or to expect certain things, and I understand that. And it becomes this journey that makes you appreciate every moment you have.

We always look at life as “Oh, man, I’m glad I’m alive.” I’m glad I can sit through a movie. You know what I mean? I’m glad I can sit here and be on this podcast and not have to be like, ” I’ll be back in a minute.” We worry about the actual, the whole big picture of life, but what is life if it ain’t living, right?

And so I… I gotta go to the bathroom every five minutes, that ain’t living. And I wasn’t living for years. I was holding in a whole lot of stuff that didn’t help me move forward because of fear, because of expectation and because… and not only fear of my command and other people knowing, but fear is it might be something that can’t be fixed.

I hit that point one time. It’s, like it’s, I’ve just accepted it now. And that scares me, too, ’cause ab- about the, the diaper thing. I don’t want to do that. I’m not o- I am not okay with that. I’m not okay with it, and I know… I’ve talked to patients that have, that are, that wear diapers every day, that sleep in diapers. And it’s, as I’m 47, I’m starting to hear the conversation way more than I want, and so it’s just like aging, it changes the dynamics, 1,000%. 

Dr. Thompson: Morgon, your story is very relatable though, in that you are trying to control your environment as much as you can. So I hear patients constantly tell me they know where every bathroom is between Grand Rapids and Chicago.

They go to the bathroom before they leave. They drive five minutes to the store. They go to the bathroom in the front of the store before they go to the back of the store. And they’re, they reduce their fluid intake before they come see me ’cause they don’t want to leak on the way there. And I think you, being obviously in the military added a whole ‘nother layer of difficulty because you weren’t able to do those little controls as you were talking.

But I think that people can relate in that, There’s a lot in your environment you’re trying to control, and at some point, people will just stay home and not go out, and stop doing social obligations, and stop doing work obligations. I had a patient recently who was working remotely, and they wanted her to come back to the office, but she couldn’t do that because she had to go every 15 minutes and that just wasn’t conducive because of where the bathroom was at the facility.

And so she ended up retiring early because of that. And so I hear these stories often. I think that our knowledge, awareness, and acceptance of patients that have overactive bladder, they have to go frequently, they leak on the way to the bathroom, has grown exponentially in that timeframe, such that there’s still doctors out there that, are in urology that don’t specialize in that, but there’s many that do.

And there are so many more resources available to patients to learn about it, such as this podcast. And my hope is that it wouldn’t be the, quite the same experience now in 2026, but there still are challenges. And treatment is not instantaneous. It’s not, “I started and I’m done.” It is a process, and the treatments often have to be layered, and that each treatment has to be tried over a period of time to know.

So if I give a patient-… a medicine and they try it for a week, and they’re like that didn’t work,” I know that it might take a month before that patient might notice a difference, and maybe they notice an incremental difference, and then I have to add something on top of that. So I think also what happens in the breakdown between patients and their physician is that knowing what to expect.

“If I’m given this med, what’s, what should I expect?” I think that’s a fair question from a patient if it’s not automatically given to you. “What should I expect from this? When should I expect to see an improvement? If I don’t see an improvement, in what period of time should I call back?” Because I do think that patients give up. And it might be because they didn’t try it long enough , but it also might be because they have side effects.

Or maybe they did try it for, a month, six weeks, and they didn’t have improvement, and then what? What’s the next step? And so I think having a clear idea when you leave with a plan is to, when should we deviate I think from this plan? What should I expect from the treatment that we’re doing? And when should I circle back? I think those are really helpful to know to try and prevent some of this repetitive stop-start treatment algorithm you were talking about in your journey.

Morgon: Firstly I wanted to hit on was like the info- we talk about the, the information being out there. I still think there’s a issue. ‘Cause before it was like in society’s norms, you don’t share personal stuff. That’s just how the culture was. Now it is, you share but you don’t act, right? And so they might share it on social media or something like that, or they might be web MDs or what. You know what I mean? We’re ChatGPT and everything right now. So that’s just a different way of not communicating what you need.

It just looks different right now. And I think that’s the bigger piece at, that I see when I when I talk to them and having the courage to do it.

And I don’t… We could have this podcast 1,000 times and I, if I’m speaking to somebody directly that’s listening to this right now you, can Google it, you can ChatGPT it, you can Gemini it, you can watch this podcast. The answers ain’t here. All they’re gonna tell you is that you need to get help, right?

Because they can tell you the story. I can tell you mine. She can tell you the ones she’s been and she’s seen. Everybody can tell you, but if you don’t take the step, nothing changes. I use this analogy with a lot of people, it’s like, “Oh, that person’s depressed.”

Would the, you should go, probably go see a therapist or something, and like just let them do their professional thing. “Oh, they can’t help me.” You’ve already accepted where you are, but now you wanna be a victim, right? So all, either you could be a champion of yourself or you could be a victim of the circumstance, and I think you, everybody should take that… I’m telling you , take the step, take the leap, and just go see somebody that knows it. And if somebody else doesn’t work, like you, I had to go through 10, 15 doctors. And this is in a, again like you said, Doc, this is in an age where the information wasn’t readily available to you. It’s, the doctors I see now are different, right?

And and now I know to look for, and I was thinking in this whole podcast what do I say? Like, how do I, like… ‘Cause people are like, “Oh, how do you find these different doctors that are willing to help you?” ‘Cause they are cr- in the military, you know why they crap? Because they jaded. They don’t get no extra money for seeing 1,000 patients.

They just see the same people all day. Civilian world, I got way better treatment. That’s why I wanted referrals. I learned that the hard way, right? And I learned to ask for the referral. Regardless of what they said they was gonna, “No, I don’t want that. This is what I want. You can’t tell me How this is gonna go.”

You can prevent me from doing something, I’ll just go to somebody else.” But in the civilian sector, you have the ability to go see somebody else, and it’s just like any other relationship. You have to be with a physician or in a medical facility that you feel gives you the feeling of safety.

 ‘Cause if you’re, if you go there and you don’t feel that way, that ain’t the place for you. That doesn’t mean they’re bad, that means that’s just not the place for you. I had two doctors I, with names I won’t, ’cause I still remember their names, that I told them, I said, “I don’t want you.

You won’t do surgery on me. I don’t like the way that you are, like, standardizing my body,” right? “And you didn’t see me, and you were more worried about procedural than how I felt about what’s going on with me.” I don’t accept that anymore, right? And so when you understand your patient’s rights, when you understand what their jobs are really there to do… because we go there, we feel that the doctor’s supposed to have the, you are the fix-all, be-all. No, they’re there to guide you with their training and their education to s- to, to take another step. And guess what? You taking that step with them might help the person behind you. And the more they do it, if they don’t flex the muscle, it doesn’t grow either.

And so if you never get the help, you never walk into the door and say, “This is what my problem is,” if you don’t wanna see a man, don’t talk to a man. If you don’t wanna see a woman, don’t talk to a woman. I had… Matter of fact, I had that big one. ‘Cause everything that they do to test this stuff is like… they thought something was wrong with my prostate, so they wanted to check that 1,000 times, right? I’ve sat in this thing That, it’s like stirrups, and they put a tube in everything. I’ve had my bladder cut on. I’ve done some crazy stuff that, and that was at a younger age, that doesn’t make you feel like a man.

And so it’s do I have women doing this stuff or do I have men doing this stuff? Now it don’t matter. I’m old enough, I’m just, I don’t even care no more, right? But when you’re young or you might not be as outgoing as I am, if you’re more comfortable with a woman, go see a woman. If you’re more comfortable with a man, ask for a man. You dictate how you’re treated.

Dr. Thompson: If you don’t feel heard or seen, is it that you didn’t circle back and provide feedback, right? Is it that maybe the provider needs feedback about the treatment?

Or is it that you were honest, you gave feedback and it, you didn’t get any return in terms of what else is there? What, this happened to me, this didn’t work for me, and there’s the next incremental step. Maybe it’s just a personality misconnection, right? There’s patients that I connect with really easily and other patients that I don’t.

So if you have that, I would encourage you to look for someone else. Word of mouth is the best. Get, again, being vulnerable with your friends and your family. Who have other people seen, and what success have they had in your community? Going to, to local community education meetings that providers give.

A lot of times the providers that are out there providing education are the ones that find it easier to talk to patients and give them that knowledge. But I think that is a good point, that if you get to a point in that relationship where it just isn’t meeting what you need, you need to go look somewhere else.

It doesn’t mean that every physician is going to be that way or that every physician doesn’t have the answer that best meets your needs. But on the flip side of that, I think it’s important, as you were saying, Morgon, to give an opportunity to develop that relationship. And sometimes that takes a two or three times to circle back and say, “Okay, this didn’t work.”

A lot of times patients will fall off the radar because I wanted them to come back or I want- I had set up an appointment to see how they were doing on the med, and they didn’t do well, and they just didn’t come or canceled the appointment, maybe not realizing that I had more to offer. I think that’s something that I’ve really tried to focus on in my practice, particularly with patients with overactive bladder, because I know that it’s not gonna be instantaneous.

It’s often not gonna be one thing, it’s gonna be several things. And so the first time I see them is the… my, maybe my only chance, my only opportunity, right? And I need to capture their attention in the sense that I need to let them know what else is there. If you come back and circle back to me, what else do I have?

Where else can we go with this? And not necessarily in great detail, but at least, here’s an overview of the options, but we need to start here. It helps, but there’s still a lot of people that despite giving them that initial kind of peek under the hood don’t circle back. And so that’s where a lot of times the misstep comes in terms of being able to continue them incrementally down that treatment path, is coming back, telling me what worked, what didn’t work.

Maybe you thought of something that would really help me in recognizing that pattern that you didn’t tell me before. Because now that you went home with this new information that I’ve given you, maybe now you see these patterns a little differently or something kinda jostles in your memory. And so being able to circle back and give that little bit of detail can be really helpful. 

Sarah Jenkins: Yeah. I would also just add, ’cause I know we have a lot of folks on here who are maybe being treated by their primary care doc, which is great. But, to these same points, if you’re not getting the care that you need, it is totally okay to ask for a referral, and that just might serve you a little bit better. Maybe you need some more advanced treatment options that these primary care docs are not able to perform in their office. So it’s just important to speak up. And like you said, Dr. Thompson, I think so many people start on meds and then they don’t work, but then they don’t tell their doctor, they just stop and think that there’s nothing else. But there are so many other things that you can try. 

Dr. Thompson: And I know we talked about with overactive bladder, but I think that’s true in other pelvic conditions. Whether it is BPH or something with the prostate or something with prolapse, there’s usually multiple options and there’s usually layered approaches to that as well.

Bruce Kassover: All this talk about that, finding the right doctor, finding the doctor you’re comfortable with, has me wondering, Morgon, how did you finally get in front of Dr. Thompson? 

Morgon: Oh, that’s a whole different… ’cause she doesn’t treat me. And I have a InterStim device in my body. That’s a whole ‘nother long story, but I do some work as a patient advocate or a patient ambassador with InterStim. And during… I think we the first time we the we met when we went to Congress. That was Congress, right? 

Dr. Thompson: Yeah, I went to Capitol Hill to- 

Morgon: Yeah… 

Dr. Thompson: …to, for bladder awareness to try and speak to congressmen and women about what we need to create more awareness around this condition and around patients like Morgon. Yeah. That’s how we met. 

Morgon: Yeah. And that’s, and so that’s how we met. It’s and InterStim has, they’ve basically changed my life. I, and I actually went to do a event with them recently, and I told them, I was like, “Before InterStim, I didn’t feel seen.” That’s the way, the best way to put it. And when I got InterStim, especially with, with this device I started to feel seen, like people actually care, like Dr. Thompson. This is my group. I don’t worry about not knowing anymore because I’ve been privileged to, to be introduced to people that are fighting the same fight, right?

So I met her through the training to get more educated to pull more people aboard, and to get the people that make the decisions on board with this, and them, asking them doing… And I speak the same way to them. I’m “It’s you. It’s us.” “Do you support it or not?” And when people feel supported, they do… It’s just like that group effect. I go work out by myself, I’m only gonna take so much chances. But I go with people, I might push myself a little bit harder. I might go walk into a gym that I normally don’t walk into.

Or it’s like you said, like seeing me, it’s “Man, there’s somebody else like me going through something that I’m going through. If they can do it, I can do it.” And so when we… and I see this in so many ways. I’m a Black man. I am in the military. I’m from the ghetto. I have bladder issues, sleep apnea all kinds of other, PTSD.

So I have so many avenues there, but one thing I know is that I’m not alone. That’s the thing. The, that’s the biggest piece, right? And with there being a information age, they would say, “Oh, there’s so much information out there.” Yeah, but there, there are people out there fighting for you, and your job is to get out there and find out who they are.

Bruce Kassover: I love hearing that, hearing a Marine whose job is out there to fight for everybody else flipping things on its head, saying that there are people out there fighting for you. That’s great. Now I’m also really excited to hear you talk about InterStim because, we’ve heard from so many people about how life-changing, neuromodulation therapies can be. So maybe for those people who aren’t familiar with either InterStim specifically or neuromodulation, could you talk a little bit briefly about what it is and what it did for you? 

Morgon: I am not paid by anyone, before I say all this, right? I know the legalities around this, these medical devices are a whole ‘nother thing. Like they ain’t give me no money, but I believe in them wholeheartedly, and I know there’s other companies that make this, but I also understand that they’ve been doing this so much longer than most. And if you know anything, somebody that’s always trying to be better and that has the time in the seat to do it, like, I would go to them first.

Not just, “Oh, are you better than everybody else ’cause you have a ego,” or, “Oh, you just, you make, you sell more.” No, there’s history that shows that they’re creating products and when they started creating, and they’re the originators of some of this stuff that other companies use. And I didn’t know any of this stuff at first, but what I did get to meet, I got to meet a representative, a sales rep, Michael, and I know I could text him right now. That’s how close we are, right? And he knew this stuff, and he shared this information with me. And having the InterStim, when he said , “Let me show you how it works. If you got any questions, call me at any time.” ‘Cause it took me a while to get it, ’cause I, when I first was presented with it, it was, they wanted to put a device in me that I would have for the rest of my life, and if I got the device, I wasn’t, they wasn’t sure if I could stay in the military.

That’s where I was at when I first got it. Now you can get thousand devices and you’ll be just fine. We wasn’t at war yet. And so when they started giving me the information and Mike started sharing it with me and Dr. Choi was, he started to, and Dr. Cole started to tell me about it, it really showed me something different.

They said, “It might not work for you.” Said, ” But what you got to lose?” And at that point, most of us get to a certain point, it’s, “I’ll try anything. Even if I, if it don’t stop, if I can go to the bathroom every 40 minutes instead of every 20, I’ll take that.”

Which is the case still today sometimes if I drink a whole lot of fluids, right? But it changed, and the way they walked me through each step and the way they brought me into the fold and said, “This is what, this is…” And it’s like the, what the doctor was talking about. It’s like educating me.

When I go to a, if I go to a physical therapist, if I go to a massage therapist , the people that I love the most that are telling me why they’re doing it, what this affects. Not just “Oh, you need to stretch,” because you get that all the time.

“You need to take this pill.” Okay. But the people that are saying, “This is why,” and then the, I guess the one phrase is, or sentence, the easy way to put it, the people that are trying to get you where you don’t have to come back. That’s the people I wanna talk to. The people that are like, “Just keep on coming. Keep…” ‘Cause they out there. “Keep on coming. Let me keep charging that card. Let me keep getting that insurance payment.” I like talking to the people because they’re genuine. They’re they have empathy, they care, they have understanding, and they genuinely wanna help you, right? They give and that’s what I, that’s giving and not expecting anything in return.

And there’s some people are like they gonna lose patients. No, they gonna get more because there is a lack of that out there. And so if you can find a place like Interstim, they were they were willing to give me and tell me, “This is why it happens.” “I don’t understand that.” “Let me get you to somebody that does.”

And it was always that. It was never a, “Oh, we don’t know. We don’t know.” I don’t, that’d be crazy if I had to put something in me you don’t know nothing about it. And but when I got it, and they put it on outside of my body, I actually don’t even remember.

I just wanted it to stop. I just wanted to stop peeing all the time, right ? And they put it on the outside of my body first ’cause they wanted to make sure it worked. They do the, put the leads up and stuff like that, and just test it out. And then there, I’d say it wasn’t, maybe 20, 30% change.

And I was like, “Eh, I’m good with it.” Then they put it in, and it was 20, 30%, and I was like, “It ain’t really doing what I thought it was gonna do.” And so Michael, my rep, told me to, “Hey, come talk to me.” He put some more settings in my device. And the setting that it’s on right now is the setting it’s been on for the last five years, the one he set.

And it changed me. But he wanted… And guess what? He a sales rep that’s been there more than, almost 20, 20-plus years. And if you know anything about companies, most sales reps don’t stay that long.

Dr. Thompson: That is something that I would want patients to look for, is somebody who’s wanting to educate them, isn’t afraid or annoyed to answer questions about how something works or why. But also the flip of that, just like in physical therapy, if the person that’s treating you gets to a point where what they’re trying isn’t working, that they’re willing to say, “Okay, we need to switch gears,” or, “I need to get, you know, get a buddy. Buddy system , Right? I need to get a buddy in here to help figure out why this isn’t moving the way it is so we can get you moving forward.

Bruce, the way I explain neuromodulation to patients is that a medicine is trying to affect the organ, the bladder, right? It’s trying to get the bladder to hold more, to behave better. But what if it has to do with the messaging system? So maybe it’s not the organ, maybe it’s the messaging system. So the way neuromodulation works is to try and improve how the brain communicates to the bladder.

To simplify it, if we can quiet the noise that’s coming from the bladder, the one that’s telling Morgon he’s gotta go every 20 minutes, and he just went, and he got out, and he feels that need to go again, if we can quiet that noise coming from the bladder, now there’s more time for the brain to give you the message at the right intensity, maybe not so often.

So now Morgon goes every 40 minutes, or maybe he gets an hour before he’s feeling that intense urge or before he’s feeling that need to go again. That’s essentially how it works. 

Bruce Kassover: And I see for Morgon’s, in Morgon’s case it worked, but can you speak more broadly to the general patient population, how successful is this?

Dr. Thompson: 85% of patients that try it for their urinary complaints, whether that be frequency, urgency, or leaking on the way to the bathroom, 85% of patients get significant improvement. And significant improvement is defined by getting 50% improvement. So for Morgon, 20 minutes to 40 minutes, five pads to two pads.

Or maybe instead of soaking pads, now you’re having damp to maybe mildly wet episodes. That’s what we’re looking for. But neuromodulation is also available for patients who leak stool, which is even-… more embarrassing and even more isolating, I think, than urinary. In patients who leak stool, and that can be anything from small episodes to large episodes, but basically any time stool or urine comes out of you without your permission, that’s considered a leak.

I think some people say to me that, “it wasn’t a leak, it was urination. I flooded myself.” Or you think they… We ask them about bowel leaks, and they think of a time when they had a huge accident, but maybe not smaller smearing episodes. So any of those episodes, again, looking for at least a 50% reduction.

And in patients who have bowel, 90% of those patients see at least 50% improvement. So it’s pretty significant and is probably the most successful of anything that we have for those conditions assuming that patients haven’t responded to the initial treatments, which are often changing maybe diet, working on constipation, trying a bladder medication, maybe physical therapy, urge suppression.

So again, there’s a number of things we try before that we try to layer on top. But if they’re not responding, then something like neuromodulation would be the next, a next step. 

Bruce Kassover: I really love hearing you talk about how it’s effective for bowel incontinence as well, because, we’ve been talking a lot about bladder issues today, but we just finished putting together a very large project on bowel incontinence, talking with, many patients and providers about what treatments are available and, just how incredibly life-limiting it is, how much of a hit it is to people’s self-image and self-esteem and just really debilitating.

And to hear that there’s hope out there for that, and 90% is absolutely remarkable. That’s gotta be… that alone has to be motivating enough to get people to, to hopefully overcome some of that embarrassment and seek out help and find that there are solutions that are meaningful for them. I imagine that from your perspective it’s gotta be pretty rewarding to have somebody come in who’s felt hopeless for years and to see that a simple procedure can literally change their lives. 

Dr. Thompson: I often say to colleagues it’s my favorite patient population to treat, particularly when we’re trying to encourage other physicians to talk to patients about it, ask patients about it, because I’ve been in situations where I’ve even asked patients, “Does this happen? How often does it happen?” And it oftentimes it would happen that either three or four visits down the road or my nurse practitioner would ask the next time they were in, all of a sudden we get a totally different history, right? Again, I think not because the patient was lying, but because the patient was embarrassed or didn’t, wanted to try and minimize it or they’ve done so many things in their life to make those accidents not happen, that to really step back and say, “Oh,” as Morgon was saying, “I just thought it was because I was drinking a lot of water. I just didn’t really know that it wasn’t normal.”

And a lot of times patients with bowel incontinence in particular have tried to control their environment so much so that it doesn’t happen, that oftentimes the impact to their life isn’t right there on the tip of their tongue until they step back and say, “Okay, wait, this doctor asked me about it, and maybe I’ll go back and share that the next time.”

And yeah, to have a patient open up to you about something so sensitive and embarrassing, and then to be able to make such a huge impact. Right now I’m treating a woman who’s in her 30s who has bowel issues and it’s it’s devastating. It’s devastating at any age, but to be able to have something to offer is, it is wonderful.

Bruce Kassover: Fantastic to hear. It’s so good. And, we’ve covered an enormous amount of ground today. We’ve talked about everything from, bowel incontinence to neuromodulation and bladder issues and how to talk to a physician, from a physician’s perspective what to be looking for.

And, I’m sure that there’s a lot more that we could go into, this is Life Without Leaks, and the one thing we always like to do as we wrap things up is to ask our guests if they have one little hint, tip, strategy, bit of advice to live a life without leaks, so Dr. Thompson, I’m wondering if you might have one that you’d be able to share with us today. 

Dr. Thompson: I think my word of advice would just be that you’re the one that matters the most. If the version of you that’s scared or unsure of exactly who the appointment’s for, that’s exactly who it’s for.

It’s for you, the person that’s dealing with these things, and you don’t need to have it figured out. You don’t need to have the right terminology or the right words. You just need to show up, and you need to make sure that you give the information to help recognize the patterns, and circle back. Come back. Let us know if it’s working, if it’s not working. And if you do that and you’re not getting the education that you need or the understanding that you need, then talk to your friends. Talk to your community. Find out who in your community is providing that who in your community has, who’s had success. Because there are people out there that take these problems very seriously. 

Bruce Kassover: That’s very meaningful, and I hope the people take you up on that. That’s fantastic to hear. However, I don’t want to minimize what you say, but as we know, as you probably know better than anybody, that everything that we do at the NAFC, everything that you do as a physician, it’s all in service of bettering the patient’s condition. So Morgon, I think that more than anything, I’d love to hear what your little hint, tip, strategy, or bit of advice to live a life without leaks might be also. 

Morgon: I’ve been developing this since the beginning. When you… something super simple. Be curious, not judgmental , right? Don’t judge the procedure. Don’t judge the physician. Don’t judge the clerk at the front desk. Be curious. Ask questions. You deserve to know about your own body and how they’re gonna treat it and how they’re gonna help you move forward in your journey. Be curious. 

Bruce Kassover: I love it. That is fantastic. And I absolutely hope that people take what you’re saying to heart. So thank you, Morgon. Thank you, Dr. Thompson. Thank you, Sarah. I really appreciate everybody sharing this. It’s been a great conversation. And, I hope to speak to everybody more again in the future. So thank you so much. 

Dr. Thompson: Thank you all. It’s nice to see you again, Morgon and Sarah.

Bruce Kassover: Life Without Leaks has been brought to you by the National Association for Continence. Our music is Rainbows by Kevin McLeod. More information about NAFC is available online at nafc.org.