A Bladder’s Tale

I’ve been putting up with some serious pain intermittently for the past two years in my bladder/prostate area.  Accompanying this pain were trip to the bathroom that got as frequent as 10 minutes apart. I’ve had various diagnoses and ran through various courses of treatment, from anti-bacterial to anti-fungal to anti-inflammatory. I was even put on a few prostate medications, one being Avodart which I quickly found gave me an allergic reaction. But still there was pain.

It started back in May of 2006. I started noticing myself going to the bathroom more often, and then not only was there frequency but pain as well. The initial diagnosis from a doc-in-a-box was to take some antibiotics and hope for the best. I took a 10-day dosage of the AB’s, and a week later I was feeling miserable all over again. So I went to my then-new PCP and he put me on Cipro. I was on Cipro for a good two months, and the day after stopping the medication it was back to square one with the excruciating pain.

The PCP referred me to a urologist, Dr. Dray. I gave him the low-down on what I had been doing thus far to try and remedy the problem. He then recommended trying an anti-fungal rememdy. It appears that males can get yeast infections in the prostate and that there is a balance of beneficial bacteria and yeast in the prostate, and when one decreases the other can take over. So the thought was that bombarding me with a heavy AB may have triggered a yeast infection. Ow. So I took Diflucan, and in 4 days I felt awesome. Case closed!

…or was it? In May of 2007 I got the same thing all over again. Frequency. Pain. I was miserable all over again. So my PCP gave me a round of antifungals.. hey, it did the trick last time, right? Well, this time it didn’t. His summation was that there may be a resistance to that same AF, so he gave me a different, low-level AF to take for 2-3 weeks. That seemed to calm the situation down again.

February of this year: Started feeling the urge to go more again and some dull pain. I know what this is. I had some ketoconazole left over from the last battle, so I took it for a couple of weeks, and that seemed to work ok.

May 2008: What is it with May? Here it comes again. So again, more AFs. Eh, still a dull ache, but not going as much.

Two weeks ago, I get up during lunch to go to the bathroom. As I’m going I feel a sharp pain in my lower abdomen. I get back to the office and then schedule myself an appointment with the PCP. He takes some blood and urine and then recommends another trip to the urologist to figure this out. I’m exasperated with the whole thing by this point.

Last week, I go visit the urologist. He has an ultrasound taken of my bladder and kidneys, and those came up clean. He stated, however, that my bladder wall was thicker than usual which typically indicates inflammation. I guess he took this as a good reason to recommend a same-day surgery.

Today,  I went in and had a cystoscopy done, and the diagnosis was interstitial cystitis. According to the Wiki article, IC has a quality-of-life equivalent to that of renal failure. And that doesn’t sound fun either.

I’m quite thankful that I now know what is going on, because having this for two years and neither me nor my doctors having a clea idea what was going on was quite taxing on the brain. The diagnosis could have been much worse. My urologist was highly recommended and rightfully so. I now have a treatment plan that I will probably have from now on.