Is "Hamptons Bladder" Plaguing the Ultra-Rich?

Here’s a question: Are “rich New Yorkers” getting “bladder surgery and Botox to avoid bathroom breaks on the drive to the Hamptons?” Insider seems to think so. They ran an article this morning called “Rich New Yorkers are getting bladder surgery and Botox to avoid bathroom breaks on the drive to the Hamptons.” Almost nothing is funny right now, so I was understandably thrilled to hear this news.

This luxury treatment, per Insider, has been adopted by the geriatric millionaire class to combat the disease known as “Hamptons bladder.” It sounds debilitating:

Crawling through increasingly insufferable summer traffic to and from their second homes, some 100 miles away, has left many of the city's wealthiest — especially those on the older side — with increased bladder issues, as there's nowhere to stop along the remote highway during the multi-hour trip.

It’s also costing people friendships: “I can't tell you how many arguments I personally get into — I've lost three friends because I'm the driver and refuse to stop for them," said one Hamptons bladder survivor, about possibly killing his incontinent peers. “There's just no place to stop.”

The salve is supposedly a “pair of specialized medical procedures: prostate artery embolization (PAE), which reduces the size of the prostate in men, and ‘bladder Botox,’ which decreases urinary frequency for women.” The latter involves “insert[ing] a small scope through the urethra and uses a special needle to inject the drug.”

Unfortunately, the evidence that these procedures are on the uptick seems to rest primarily on one New York City urologist, Dr. David Shusterman, who claims to have seen a 20 percent spike in PAE procedures over the past few months — or roughly 10 a week, with an additional one or two patients seeking “bladder Botox.” This might have something to do with the fact that Shusterman has been advertising the procedures, which cost up to $20,000, with the tagline “Race to the Hamptons, not the bathroom.”