alpacagirl
09-09-2005, 08:54 AM
Hi I'm new to the board, although I've been reading it for the last few weeks. My urogyno diagnosed me with IC on August 10 via a PST after 8 months of increasingly frequent UTIs (or at least UTI-like symptons). Usually the pain would go away when I started taking the Cipro, but then a couple of times it seemed to either come back quickly or no go away completely where I felt wierd and some discomfort with no pain. I had one heparin instill before a 2-week work trip to China which I was fine the whole time until I came back and had sex with my boyfriend, which started up a 10 day on/off flare. I got so frustrated that when I had to stay home from work b/c of the pain earlier this week that I spent all day researching and looking for something to make sense of this whole thing.
I ran across BJ Czarapata's (who is in my area) approach and Kay Benton's story that a bacteria such as enterococcus (96% of her IC patients have it) can be passed from man to woman and back and live in the bladder but will only be caught through a broth culture that has to grow for 5-6 days, not the standard urinalysis every doctor does for UTIs. I got the culture done and am waiting for the results, but it seems too convenient that my symptoms started a month after I became intimate with my boyfriend and the symptoms have become increasingly frequent since that time. He is getting tested too (some study said 13-19 partners of women have the same bacteria). Has anyone else had experience with this, and if so, what were your results? I think the theory that too much yeast in the body from too many antibiotics that IC patients are given without a yeast inhibitor seems to make a lot of sense too. I'm sure it's not the same for everyone, IC seems like a very complex and individualized condition. This just seems to ring true for me, and I hope the culture turns up something that I can get rid of once and for all.
Whew that was a long message...
I ran across BJ Czarapata's (who is in my area) approach and Kay Benton's story that a bacteria such as enterococcus (96% of her IC patients have it) can be passed from man to woman and back and live in the bladder but will only be caught through a broth culture that has to grow for 5-6 days, not the standard urinalysis every doctor does for UTIs. I got the culture done and am waiting for the results, but it seems too convenient that my symptoms started a month after I became intimate with my boyfriend and the symptoms have become increasingly frequent since that time. He is getting tested too (some study said 13-19 partners of women have the same bacteria). Has anyone else had experience with this, and if so, what were your results? I think the theory that too much yeast in the body from too many antibiotics that IC patients are given without a yeast inhibitor seems to make a lot of sense too. I'm sure it's not the same for everyone, IC seems like a very complex and individualized condition. This just seems to ring true for me, and I hope the culture turns up something that I can get rid of once and for all.
Whew that was a long message...