I added it up once. I wish I hadn't.
Pads, pull-ups, overnight protection, the good ones that don't bunch, north of $3,000 a year. Every year. That was the plan: pay quietly until I died.
But the money wasn't the real pain. The real pain was the part of me that stopped saying yes.
I stopped sitting through movies. Skipped the long drive to see my grandkids. Started picking restaurants by where the bathroom was, not the food. Stopped being the guy people could count on for a whole day out and started being the guy with an excuse.
A man on a forum I lurked on said it better than I can: "It's ruining my life." Another one, after he finally got it under control, said the thing that actually changed everything for me:
"It's really mostly in our heads that this is permanent."