askye, I hope you finally get this thing kicked.

Hil, that sucks, I'm sorry.

Oh, Hil, what a disappointment. I'm sorry.

askye, much get well soon ~ma for you.

sj, home safe and warm with you sounds like a great way for TCG to enjoy a Monday.

sj, home safe and warm with you sounds like a great way for TCG to enjoy a Monday.

It is. I'm getting spoiled. I wish he could work from home once a week, especially in the lousy winter weather. And we made sure to get out yesterday and Saturday so that the winter claustrophobia wouldn't be so bad today.

I have that in the summer.

Ouch, Hil, that sucks!! Stupid students.

That's unfortunate, Hil. I'm sorry.

Askye, I'm glad you were able to get some help for your virus, and I hope you feel better soon.

asKye, so sorry 2015 has not been good for health so far. I've been meaning to come here for a week, because I was recently reminded, through a transgression of my own, that the kind of soap you use in your nether regions can trigger an IC episode. sensitive skin soap, dr. Bronner's soap, scent free soap, nearly all of them have soy lecithin, which I think, but I'm not sure, is the ingredient that's bad. The nurse practitioner at my gynecologist office suggested using Cetaphil, the kind you use on your face, because it's super mild and it's not a soap. And she's right, it does work. I saw upstream that you were wondering about vitamins. I had to look around but I found that Centrum makes one multivitamin that limits itself to a 100% RDA. It seems ok for me. When I said vitamin C was a problem for me, I should have added that upon the recommendation of an uncle decades ago, who was a big fan of the book Life Extension, I'd been taking mega doses of vitamin C ever since, like thousands of milligrams a day. The 100% rda in the Centrum seems to be fine. it's such a p.i.t.a, IC, and sometimes I forget, or try something and it doesn't work. Like, I decided to try the Dr Bronners mild castile soap.Um, nope! I hope your new doctor can help you with installations. At least for me I had four or five installations over about a two or three month period, and then, once I knew how it could help, I went back at different times like three more times for tune ups.I've been pretty much pain free since July of last year now. I think I had maybe 2 years of on off pain.

I'm using voice recognition on the tablet, and I don't think I need to white font that anyway, but it does remind me, is there a way to read white font on a tablet? I only know how to do it when I'm on laptop and I can highlight it with a mouse.

oh and, before this new doctor who just got out of the fellowship, I had a cystoscopy by the regular urologist, a regular surgical procedure. It helped for a while but it came back, in about a year and a half. It might have worked permanently if I had known then what I know now about the foods and vitamins and the soaps. so if your new Doctor offers a cystoscopy and it will be covered by your insurance I say go for it. I think this might be the last info dump I have on dealing with IC, but also, if you do do installations, ask them about the size of the catheter that they use. They had to order smaller ones for me. If I ever have an installation again I'm going to ask them to start using pediatric catheters.

Java cat, it is good to see you! To read whitefont on my iPad, I highlight, copy & paste the text into any convenient text edit area. Often I use the text edit area right on the thread. That means taking the chance of accidentally hitting post, though. That might just be mynproblem, though.

I don't think I need instillations (I still haven't found a urologist yet with everything else going on) because if I can keep up on the food thing I seem to be okay.

And I strayed with the food. I had diet coke. More than one, okay I had like 3 in a week. Which is bad, but damnit I wanted comfort. ALso I was at TJs and got some dried apples that I thought would be safe and I ate BUNCH yesterdayy and I think that might also be the culpruit.

I ordered the multivitamins from the IC shop, they are pricey but not too bad plus they come in the mail. As for soap, I've been using a locally made goats milk and oatmeal soap (which I actually got from Mom because there's a store near her that sells it so she sent it to me and then realized it was made in Vermont).

I've had cystoscopies for diagnostic reasons and also trying to figure out if the badly down bladder reflux surgery (they left pockets) was causing the recurrent infections (answer, maybe but there's no way to tell or fix it easily. Original doctors put the tubes so they are touching the stumps they left the only thing to do is fix the whole mess which no doctor will do unless there was conclusive proof that was the issue).

One thing I'm realizing in therapy is that besides the bipolar disorder I also have a lot of trauma related issues to catheters I had when I was little and would get UTIs and would just refuse to go the bathroom. So my parents had to take me to the doctor where they would empty my bladder for me. It was a pleasant experience at all and I don't know how I'd react to be awake and having an instillation done.