diary of an inflamed bladder: March 2011

Friday 11 March 2011

First ever blog post

Hello everyone/anyone,

If you are reading this you have found a brand new blog started by someone suffering with Interstitial cystitis/a seriously inflammed and over sensitive bladder.

I am here because I want to try and share my experiences with anyone else who is suffering in the same/a similar way.

I want to put out there the things which really can help your body, many of which are things you can easily impliment into your life.

I'd really appreciate any feedback.

I will post again soon.

little_ducks

What is Interstitial Cystitis?

Interstitial Cystitis is a condition which can be suffered by men, women and children, however most of the recognised sufferers are women.
It is a higly painful and debilitating conditon of which the symptoms are - urgency to urinate, pain and frequency of urination. Often the sufferer will have sudden urges to urinate, or even a constant urge to urinate which does not subside. Pain can be felt before, during or after urination, or all of the time - it can be in the urethra, bladder or in the whole abdominal area and is often compared to burning or pressure. Frequency is also a terrible problem, in some bad cases people can urinate up to around 100 times in a 24hr period. Frequency can make things very difficult at night because the sufferer must get up to go to the loo and this interrupts sleep leaving them exhausted and without any deep sleep (RAM) where people heal and repair.
Some people may have some but not all of the symptoms, other may have all of the symptoms listed and more. Other symptoms can include tiny white floating bits in the urine, suspensions in the urine, dust like sediment in the urine, dark and/or smelly urine (with no infection present), pain which is worse during menstruation/ovulation.
Interstitial Cystitis can often be misdiagnosed or not diagnosed at all...many women go through months or even years of taking course upon course of antibiotics for a urine infection that isn't there. Its very important to get a urine sample sent off by your GP to the lab for further investigation. Children, teenagers and young adults are often told they cannot have IC because they are too young, even when tests and symptoms show that they do, this is down to old fashioned UK regulations around diagnosis of the disease. Men are often told they have prostate problems rather than a bladder problem and this misdiagnosis is very problematic because they cannot attempt to improve their pain with the wrong diagnosis especially when they may never have heard of IC to suspect it for themselves. This is why much more information needs to be put out there for people to understand what they may have and take it from there in the most suitable way for the individual.
To get a diagnosis in the UK a person must undergo invasive tests, including (some uros do only 1 others do all):
cystoscopy (where a camera is inserted into the bladder via the urethra)
biopspy (a sample of the tissue of the bladder lining is taken for investigation)
distension of the bladder (the bladder if filled with fluid whilst the patient is in most cases under general anesthetic, the cytoscope camera then is used to see if there are lesions or tiny hemorrhages in the wall of the bladder as it is stretched by the fluid).
However in America patients are often diagnosed by symptoms alone and treated accordingly.
Many pain treatments are available and often patients are offered anti-depressants as well. Pain treatments can take months to come into play (alot of waiting in pain can occur), or they can mask the issue slightly but not fully. Some people are also prescribed rolling courses of antibiotics. There are also things like bladder and urethral stretches used. But none of these treatments offers a cure they are just ways in which some people have found relief, whilst others have had a worstening of symptoms.