So This is Weird A KEGEL CHAIR

I love riding my girlfriend Emsella at the doctor’s office.

- LEAH RUMACK

Twice a week for three weeks, I zip into a little room at Compass Dermatology in Toronto, close the door and straddle what looks like an overturned dome. I sit astride her like a jaunty cowgirl, and when I emerge 28 minutes later, I’ve “done” 11,000 Kegels and my pelvic floor is practically 20 years old again (okay, fine—23 years old!).

“The Kegel Throne”—or call her by her official name: Emsella—is a powder-blue chair supercharged with technology that stimulates pelvic floor muscles with high-intensity focused electromagnetic energy to help treat incontinence. Dermatologist Julia Carroll brought it into her practice after she had success using it herself.

“I’m a woman over 40 who has had a child, so you do the math,” she says wryly. “Fifty-year-olds should not be wearing diapers! Why do we accept that as women?”

Now Emsella is one of the more popular treatments at her midtown clinic, with patients happily forking over about $2,000 for six sessions over three weeks. So when she invites me to try it, I can’t say no.

The Canadian Continence Foundation estimates that 33 percent of women over 40 will deal with some degree of incontinence, and since I had my kid, I’m one of them. While my trusty liquid-absorbing Knix undies have definitely gotten me through more than one unexpected violent sneeze, I’d really like to not have to cross my legs every time I laugh. Could this be the answer to my pelvic prayers?