I became incontinent before the world wide web was happening. The day I became incontinent, my wife had to run to a local chain pharmacy to buy anything that would allow me to step outside the shower. They carried Depend and Attends. She came back with Depend Briefs. The next day I was admitted to the ICU as I had become quadriplegic. I was kept in hospital diapers, which were worse than the Depend diapers. When I got out of the hospital 6 weeks later, my cousin had shipped us a large case (nearly 300) of Attends Institutional diapers. From the onset of my incontinence, I woke up every morning to a bed soaked in urine. After three months of changing the bed every day (with me in it) and needing my clothes and underpad changed after every wetting, we started our search for better diapers. The only resource available was disability magazines, as the medical community were clueless.
Through a magazine ad we found a retailer of adult cloth diapering supplies, which was a game changer. The cloth diapering retailer gave me samples of Molicare Super on a subsequent visit, as he had just been to Germany and was thinking of importing them. Those Molicare Supers made me realize that there were disposables available elsewhere in the world that would handle my level of incontinence. With the implementation of the web, and my family were early adopters, I found the first person to import Molicare to the USA, and later Abena. I also discovered ABDL during my searches for adult diapers. It was quite awhile before an ABDL company came out with a diaper better than the early Abena Abriform M4/L4. I had no interest in ABDL print diapers, but the ABDL companies pushed the envelope, and plain diapers better than Abena started being released. I spent many years as a guest on ADISC for its invaluable information on the latest release of diapers, especially ones that I would be interested in (I can wear in front of medical professionals without raising eyebrows).
In the USA, insurance rarely covers diapers. Hospice, Medicaid, and the Veterans Administration, are the only services that do offer diapers through every state, but the quality of what is covered by hospice and Medicaid varies greatly from state to state. I am not a veteran, so I do not know why the quality of what is covered by the Veterans Administration varies from one location to the next.
When you deal with severe incontinence, there is no "wrong" product, only products that must be used for specific situations. I have IBS and use cheap diapers in the morning until my bowel has finished emptying. I use pull-ups for quick doctor appointments. I use pads when airing out. Have I bought incontinence product that I regret? Yes, but I don't throw them away; I use them however I can. The bigger issue is when purchasing reusable products. If it doesn't work well for me, I won't use it. An example is the Threaded Armor line of adult diapers. Great product, but not good for me.
Search engines push things to the top that will provide ad revenue to the search engine company. You can specify a very specific product and still have it appear on page 2, if that company does not pay for advertising to the search engine company. It's the same everywhere in the world. I recently found a reusable incontinence supply company in Australia and am exchanging emails with them now, to determine what products might work best for me. It was a fluke that they came up in a search, because I happened to put the right combination of terms into the search engine. The company has been around for a long while, so I know it's the search terms and not because they are new.
It's difficult to find the right product(s), period. Even after you find them, manufacturers change the specs, prices change, reusable product wears out, and new product is being released. There's a constant hunt for what will work best.
