Physio letter says keep a bladder diary for three days before my first appointment. Do I really have to measure every wee?

First pelvic health appointment is in two and a half weeks, after a long wait that I will not bore you with. The letter came today with a form attached and the instruction to complete a bladder diary for three days beforehand and bring it.

The form has columns for time, amount, drinks, leaks, urge, and "activity at the time". AMOUNT. As in measured. In millilitres.

I work in an open plan office with one toilet per floor and I am not walking in there with a measuring jug. Do I really have to measure every single one? Can I just do the times? Does it matter which three days? And does it count if one of the days is a Saturday where I mostly sit on the sofa?

The diary is what finally got me referred, so I am a convert. Do it properly at home and do what you can at work. The GP read mine for about two minutes and said "that is a much clearer picture" after three appointments of me just describing it.

Cheap plastic jug from the supermarket, lives in the bathroom, never goes back in the kitchen. That is the whole trick.

For work I just wrote the time and left the amount blank. Nobody minded.

Sian, the short answer is measure what you reasonably can, leave a gap where you cannot, and never guess. A blank in the volume column is honest; an estimated number looks exactly like a measured one and can mislead whoever reads it.

Why the volumes matter. The NICE guideline on urinary incontinence in women, NG123, recommends bladder diaries in the initial assessment and asks for a minimum of 3 days covering variations in your usual activities, such as both working and leisure days. Times alone tell me how often you go. Volumes tell me why, because many small voids and a few large ones point at different things. Drinks tell me whether a busy day was the bladder or the tea. And the leak and urge columns are how I separate leaking on effort from leaking with urgency, which decides the order of treatment.

So on your questions. Which days: include at least one working day and one non-working day, which means your Saturday on the sofa absolutely counts, as long as there is also a day that looks like the days your symptoms bother you. If that is the office, the office day matters more than a perfect record. Times without volumes at work, volumes at home, is a perfectly usable diary. And do not change what you drink for the three days. A tidy diary that describes someone else is the one thing I cannot use.

I cannot tell you anything about your own symptoms from a forum, and your physiotherapist will go through the diary with you. The site has a fuller page on how pelvic floor progress is measured, including what a bladder diary actually shows.

Bethan Rowsell said:

A tidy diary that describes someone else is the one thing I cannot use.

This is very fair and I was absolutely planning to not drink coffee for three days so I would look better. Caught.

Jug bought. Doing Tuesday, Wednesday and Saturday.

Update. Appointment was yesterday. She read the diary first, before asking me anything, and the first thing she said was that I go to the toilet "in case" far more than I need to, which nobody had ever noticed because I had only ever described the leaking.

Turns out the volumes on the Saturday were a completely different shape from the office days. So the sofa day was useful after all. Programme starts this week, review booked for six weeks.