September is Interstitial Cystitis(IC) Awareness Month!
As anybody who knows me personally(or has read far back enough in this blog) is aware, I was diagnosed with this Invisible Illness earlier this year, and have had quite a rough time coping/going through daily activities with it. My life was quite literally ripped out from under me and replaced with a different way of existing.
I just recently had surgery, which seems to have really helped keep my symptoms at bay. I want as many people as possible to be aware of this condition and how debilitating and life changing it truly is.
This disease doesn’t stop. You have this until you die. There is no cure, or fix-all to the problem. What the medical community can offer are band-aids over symptoms at most. Some patients through careful diet and lifestyle can live a relatively pain-free life or even reach temporary remission, others are not so lucky.
The quality of life of IC patients is worse than patients experiencing chronic renal failure and undergoing dialysis.
I’m going to have this blog give daily facts about this condition throughout the month from the IC Awareness site.
Even if you’re not a sufferer, or don’t quite know what this disease is yet, I’d ask anyone who cares about educating others to reblog this and see how much of tumblr can be made aware.
Since it’s the 2nd, I’ll post two of the daily facts off the IC Awareness website.
1. Interstitial cystitis is not a rare condition. New epidemiological studies revealed that three to eight million women in the USA and one to four million men with IC may have symptoms of Interstitial Cystitis. That could be as many as one out of every 26 people in the USA.
2. There are various forms of “cystitis” that are easily confused. Bacterial cystitis, aka urinary tract infection, is treated with antibiotics. Radiation cystitis occurs after radiation therapy for cancer. Eosinophilic cystitis is a rare, inflammatory based cystitis. Interstitial cystitis is more of an “injury” to the bladder and/or bladder lining. Antibiotics are considered useless in the treatment of IC/BPS.
Invisible diseases & this one is particularly frustrating.
(via bornareddirtgirl)
