Does anyone else have bowel/bladder issues with MG?
Ever since I've been diagnosed with MG, I have developed horrible bowel and bladder issues where nothing seems to want to come out. I've been using catheters on and off for the past couple of years. Does anyone else have similar issues?
I do not take any medication for MG only IVIG is the only thing that helps. My bladder stopped holding urine at all. May be Surgery coming up.
I have bowel issues & cramping which, I am sure is related to the "mestinon." I was unable to take the tablets because of extreme bowel issues, so it was discontinued & I am now taking it in "compound" form & have reached the recommended dosage. _ Gail.
See your urologist and ask about GEMTESA for bladder problems. It was a miricle for all my symptoms. Bowel? I have urgent and unexpected diarehha for no reason. Wish I had an answer for you.
Hi, I'm new this group. However, about five years ago I started having the usual bladder problems Urgency, unable to empty the bladder and my favor is when I get up in the middle of the night and my bladder empties without any warning. Also, I'm late onset at 70.
I've visited Urologist from five different medical groups. For three and half years before being diagnosed with gMG one urologist after another told me that there wasn't anything wrong with my Bladder and I didn't need to return.
One important point. Nobody can say it's because this is a side effect of Pyridostigmine. Remember doctors are human just like us and they don't always know everything.
Back in the 70's and 80's I served in the Navy as an Urology Tech. My job was to work with Urologist all day.
Long winded story, but the main piece of the puzzle is that Urologist now have a way to test Bladder function. I recently completed this test and it showed that my bladder muscle wasn't responding to my brian. The muscles in the bladder never engaged while I was trying to empty it. I have to use my abdominal muscles instead.This is fascinating, and I would like to see some research. The bladder muscles are smooth (or involuntary) muscles and are not supposed to be affected by MG antibodies. But we all know they are. This remains an unexplored area of MG. up until about two years ago, they didn’t have anyway to test the function of the bladder muscle. Think about it this way, if the bladder muscle was an involuntary muscle we wouldn’t have any way to stop the bladder from emptying anytime and anyplace.
My best advice is see a urologist, because they are the one’s that can perform this test.
When the urologist performed this test on me it was clear that the bladder muscle wasn’t responding to any signals from the brain. I had to use my abdominal muscles to empty my bladder. The problem with this approach is the abdominal muscles can’t actually completely empty the bladder and at times I retained up to a half liter of urine in my bladder. This creates new kinds of problems.
Don’t take my word see a urologist and they can run a simple but not always a pleasant test.
