She leaned over our table, physically planting herself into the conversation, and said in a hoarse whisper, “For years I thought I was the only one with this problem! But now I’m hearing about it everywhere.” She had glommed on to the subject when I mentioned that my CV included a stint working for an adult diaper supplier. I could not believe how relieved she was to be talking about the subject of incontinence.

We were sitting in some worn cafeteria chairs at a high school reunion neither of us thought we would manage to make. But here I was, seated beside my dear high school confidante, Sherry B. Why I had never made the effort to get in touch with her during the lapsed decades was beyond me. She was such a vibrant soul, despite the physical changes that were impossible to ignore. So many youthful friendships are dropped at the end of high school when everyone goes off in different directions, there was nothing unusual about this case either. But perhaps back when I was about 20 and my mother mentioned that Sherry had been diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis, I just didn’t know what to do with the news and wouldn’t touch the distance between us. But here was Sherry with canes clipped to her arms and sporting the same old broad grin as ever.

After our initial hugs and exclamations, Sherry and I showed each other pictures of our families and moved on to the subject of what our typical days looked like, with the last of the teenagers getting ready to fledge. I told her of my recent experience in elder care products and this is when she grabbed the opportunity to talk about the humiliation she first experienced with loss of bladder control. It was like I was her high school confidante all over again, that the decades between us had never transpired.

“I can’t tell you what I went through up here,” she tapped her forehead with an angular finger, “when I first realized that peeing my pants was something I was simply going to have to live with. To lose control over something most babies master by the age of two and a half is downright frightening, not to mention humiliating.” She looked me square in the eye and said with a laugh, “I had to learn to let go of letting go and get on with the rest of my life. Thank goodness for the internet. Buying feminine products at the drugstore was one thing, buying adult diapers is another.”

“After all the pain and agony I went through at first, thinking I was the only one with this problem, now it seems everywhere in magazines and on television there are ads for incontinence products. And even you being the business. What gives with that?” she asked.

At that moment, my admiration for my dear long-neglected friend almost pushed me to tears. While listening to her talk, I had been imagining what it could possibly have been like for her, raising those three smiling, rowdy boys to young manhood as her photo album testified, never knowing next what wrench her MS would toss into the works. How dull and uncomplicated my life must have seemed to her in comparison. Instead she waited, genuinely wanting me to answer her question. So I indulged her with my usual professional breeze of statistics about the graying of America and the rising demand for adult diapers.

In fact, the first half of this century will see a 147% rise in the number of citizens who are 65 and older. Combine that with an increasing life expectancy and the aging complication of incontinence and it is not hard to understand why there is growing publicity of incontinence care products. People from all stations in life can experience incontinence and will have to deal with the prejudices that ensue. I told Sherry she could consider herself avant-garde with her frankness and uplifting attitude. There was a public out there hungry to hear her overcoming voice and she needed to start blogging and podcasting it. I was in my PR mode without a thought to Sherry’s receptiveness.

It was a good thing I stopped my selfish spiel when I did. Sherry was slumping slightly in her chair, like a wilting chrysanthemum. I realized how silly my little speech must have sounded to her, this woman who had just flown across the country, enduring the humiliation of airports while teetering between canes and wheelchairs and coping with incontinence. She was simply here to lay eyes on some familiar faces from long ago, from a time when she had far less cares. She was not looking for the PR assignment I had tried to hand her. A listening ear and a little help to the ladies room was what she needed right at the moment. She maneuvered into her wheel chair and asked me for some push power. “Just wheel it to the door and dump the cripple in,” she instructed. I stopped dead in my tracks, wondering if I had heard correctly. Then I saw her teasing grin. Attitude is indeed everything and Sherry’s spunk rules.