Evan Francis, 30, is now waiting for surgery that could change her life
A woman whose rare condition left her looking nine months pregnant hasn’t been able to wee for two-and-a-half years. Evan Francis, 30, spent six months in agony before she was diagnosed with Fowler’s syndrome in July 2024 – a rare condition which stops the bladder emptying.
Her symptoms started around Christmas 2023 when she had days when she couldn’t wee. She became so bloated she looked pregnant and medics eventually found a litre of urine which had to be drained from her bladder.
Evan now has a supra pubic catheter in her lower stomach but is hoping to have surgery so she can wee by connecting a tube to her belly button. Evan, from Isle of Sheppey, who works in PR, said: “I have found this experience incredibly traumatic and embarrassing. I feel this is such a humiliating and degrading condition because there’s no awareness of it.
“I’m very young to have problems with my bladder, and, although it happens to young people more often than we think, it’s not talked about very much. We think of catheters as being for people in hospital and associated with ageing. When you hear the word ‘catheter’ you don’t think of people like me, but this can happen to someone of any age.
“My confidence has plummeted since this happened to me. I haven’t been able to go on dates or anything. I can’t wait for the day when I wake up and want to scroll on Tinder.
“It’s heart-breaking to be my age and so afraid of intimacy because you have a tube coming out of you. And you can’t just talk about it because people don’t, they think talking about bladders is a bit grotesque. We are more willing to talk about stoma bags than bladder problems.”
Evan went to her GP with back pain and bloating on January 3, 2024, and was given antibiotics for a UTI. Two weeks later she went back to the GP with the same symptoms and told them she hadn’t urinated in two days and was told it was another UTI.
She was given an ultrasound in mid February, 2024, which revealed 300ml of urine in her bladder and she was referred to urology. While waiting for an appointment, Evan spent 36 hours unable to wee and was told by her GP to go to A&E if it got worse.
She said: “It was horrendous. “I looked nine months pregnant “
After feeling dizzy and sick while in a supermarket the next day she went to Medway Hospital, Kent where she had a litre of urine drained from her bladder. “It was so weird,” Evan said. “I would sit on the loo and felt no urge whatsoever.
“They were so compassionate at the hospital. They said I’d have gone septic if I’d waited any longer.”
After 24 hours Evan was sent home with a catheter draining her bladder into a bag tied to her leg. She was so mortified it took five days for her to pluck up the courage to leave the house. “Fortunately I had lots of wide-legged trousers”, she said.
At hospital two weeks later Evan still couldn’t wee when the catheter was removed and started bloating again. She had a cystoscopy in May 2024, where a tiny camera was inserted into her urethra, with two MRIs in the June.
In the July she had urodynamics testing, where her bladder was filled with water to test its function. Doctors said her muscles weren’t able to release her urine, and she had Fowler’s syndrome, and would need to be catheterised for life.
Evan said: “They talk about it quite matter-of-factly, but it’s a huge thing to hear and destroyed my mental health. I am very grateful though that my consultant was really quick to diagnose me.”
But Evan struggled with 35 UTIs between February and August 2024, and was hospitalised for sepsis in the August so was switched to a supra pubic catheter. The catheter is a tube which comes out of her bladder and through her lower abdomen.
In December 2025, at UCLH, Evan had a special electronic device implanted at the base of her spine which sends a signal to the bladder muscle to release urine, like a bladder pacemaker, but it didn’t work for her.
She joined the waiting list, in February 2026, for an operation which will make a tube from her appendix to divert her bladder to her belly button so she can connect a tube and open a valve when she needs the toilet. Evan said: “It’s really exciting, and scary because it’s an eight-hour operation. But the wait is very long and I feel like my life is on hold until then.”
She added “This is mentally debilitating for a woman of my age. People say I do so well with this, but they don’t see how much I struggle with it. I wish urinary retention was more widely discussed and known about.
“We talk about incontinence but not retention, I think that’s why people feel shame and embarrassment around it. I’d love it if there was a huge study involving all the patients with Fowler’s syndrome because nobody knows why it happens.”
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: www.dailyrecord.co.uk
