There's a drawer in my bathroom that my wife has never opened. It's where I keep the pads. Tucked underneath the spare towels where nobody would think to look. I restock them when she's out grocery shopping. I throw the used ones away in the bin outside, never the one in the bathroom. I've been doing this for almost four years.

I'm 67 years old. I raised three kids. I coached their football teams. I built a deck onto our house with my own hands. And every morning for the last four years I've stood in my bathroom sticking an incontinence pad into my underwear like it's just another part of getting dressed.

You don't talk about this. Not with your mates. Not with your wife. Definitely not with your kids. You just handle it quietly and hope nobody notices. And after a while the hiding becomes so automatic you almost forget you're doing it. Almost.

It started with my prostate surgery. The leaking was supposed to be temporary. My surgeon told me to do my Kegels and give it time. So I did. Every day for months. The squeezing felt right — I could feel the muscle working. But nothing actually improved. I was still going through four or five pads a day. Still getting up three times a night. Still quietly rearranging my entire life around a problem I couldn't control.