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Hey everybody!
My name's Sarah and I'm originally from Toronto, Canada. I first started this difficult journey 2 years ago when after 19 years of life and having no UTIs, it seemed I was having one every week and they were really awful. I had just come off of Effexor for anxiety and then it happened. It was really hard because I had just started another job working with all students and no one understood why I didn't want to go drinking or needed to go home to sleep after work. I went to the urgent clinic maybe 8 times (my mom and I joked that I have frequent flyer miles there). I was treated with your standard antibiotics, they kept switching them. For pain I was given pyridium and tylenol 3 which did very little. I finally asked my mom (a nurse) to come down with me to the hospital as an advocate because no one was listening to me and I was a student and didn't have a family doctor. Anyways, after a horrendous experience with another nurse who basically sassed me out for being teary during my examination and for bringing an advocate, I was sent to a new family doc who is awesome and put me on Vesicare for the time being, got referred to the urology clinic at KGH (which has 2 of the top IC docs so that's exciting) and while it took another 6 months to see the doc (not one of those top 2) and then another 6 months for him to take me seriously...I was FINALLY diagnosed and am now able to start treatment properly
In the interim of waiting for doctors I found this site when I googled "misdiagnosed UTIs" and found the food lists and recipes and forums and it was so helpful so thank you for all of your awesomeness <3
Today I'm on elmiron. The side effects scare me a little but I'm really excited to find something that helps as both vesicare and enablex didn't help me out. I also just completed biofeedback sessions which I found only mildly improved symptoms but it was kind of fun anyways. I'm looking forward to learning and growing with all of you and finally managing my IC
Cheers,
Sarah
My name's Sarah and I'm originally from Toronto, Canada. I first started this difficult journey 2 years ago when after 19 years of life and having no UTIs, it seemed I was having one every week and they were really awful. I had just come off of Effexor for anxiety and then it happened. It was really hard because I had just started another job working with all students and no one understood why I didn't want to go drinking or needed to go home to sleep after work. I went to the urgent clinic maybe 8 times (my mom and I joked that I have frequent flyer miles there). I was treated with your standard antibiotics, they kept switching them. For pain I was given pyridium and tylenol 3 which did very little. I finally asked my mom (a nurse) to come down with me to the hospital as an advocate because no one was listening to me and I was a student and didn't have a family doctor. Anyways, after a horrendous experience with another nurse who basically sassed me out for being teary during my examination and for bringing an advocate, I was sent to a new family doc who is awesome and put me on Vesicare for the time being, got referred to the urology clinic at KGH (which has 2 of the top IC docs so that's exciting) and while it took another 6 months to see the doc (not one of those top 2) and then another 6 months for him to take me seriously...I was FINALLY diagnosed and am now able to start treatment properly
In the interim of waiting for doctors I found this site when I googled "misdiagnosed UTIs" and found the food lists and recipes and forums and it was so helpful so thank you for all of your awesomeness <3
Today I'm on elmiron. The side effects scare me a little but I'm really excited to find something that helps as both vesicare and enablex didn't help me out. I also just completed biofeedback sessions which I found only mildly improved symptoms but it was kind of fun anyways. I'm looking forward to learning and growing with all of you and finally managing my IC
Cheers,
Sarah