Elle Adams: Podcast co-host reveals she has been diagnosed with rare condition which made her unable to pee
LONDON, UK: A lady whose life changed "overnight" when she awoke one morning unable to urinate has shed light on the uncommon disease. Elle Adams, a podcast co-host and content creator from London, claimed to be leading a "dream life" until the morning of October 2, 2020 when she was unable to urinate, no matter how much water she drank.
"I was extremely healthy. I had no other problems. I woke up one day and I wasn’t able to wee. I was very concerned. I was at breaking point — my life had completely changed. I wasn’t able to complete a simple task like go to the toilet," Adams said, as per Yahoo News.
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The 30-year-old, who updated her 114,000 Instagram followers on her health journey, claimed she then went to the hospital, where doctors sent her home after draining one liter of fluid from her bladder and inserting an indwelling catheter that is still in place.
'They taught me to self-catheterise'
"I remember so vividly the doctor saying 'we can remove the catheter and see if you can go, which we don’t think you’ll be able to. Or you can go home with it in and go to outpatients urology in a couple of weeks'," Adams wrote on her Instagram. "It was in the middle of the pandemic and I was all alone." After still being unable to urinate a week later, Adams "walked into [an] urology clinic desperate for help". "They taught me to self-catheterise and told me to learn to live with it," she said. "A doctor that day told me I was just anxious and if I went away and did some yoga and wellness I’d probably be fine."
Fowler's Syndrome
According to Bladder Health UK, Adams has disclosed that she has since been diagnosed with Fowler's Syndrome, a rare condition in which young women experience difficulty urinating because the bladder's sphincter muscle is unable to relax, leading to urinary retention. According to the Continence Foundation of Australia, a bladder can contain 400 to 600 ml of fluid, however the sensation of needing to urinate will start around 200 to 300 ml.
"I have Fowler’s and I also have an overactive bladder," Adams said. "On a day-to-day basis what that means for me is that I wee 30-35 times a day, and some of those times I can’t go because my sphincter doesn’t open properly so I have to self catheterise myself — unless you follow me into a toilet you would not know there was anything wrong."