Life with IC is hard for all of the family

[jwisely]

I am a mom with IC. I was just told that after 13 years of so called UTIs that I actually have an answer of why I pee 35 times a day (or more). My kids hate it because I have to stop and go, my husband worries about me because I cant sleep well at night due to getting up so much, and I am tired of not having something to fix it so I can have a better love life again. I am going to have the interstim done becasue the diets, the pills, and other treatments are not working. I get it installed in two phases. If the intial one does not work, what do I loose?

Jessie Knox:flower:

[kadi]

Hi Jessie,
Have you tried instillation treatments? Just asking because several urologists told me there was nothing left for me besides interstim or clinical trials, but I have had huge improvement on heparin/marcaine/sodium bicarbonate instillations.


Do complete research on the interstim, okay? Check out the Patient Handbook link at the top of this page, read the positive & negative posts here & ask your doctor lots of questions.

Sending you a hug & wishing you better days soon!

[ICNDonna]

Absolutely do your research before you schedule interstim surgery. There are some who have excellent results, others who have had severe consequences from the interstim.

Donna

[vm]

Were you just diagnosed???? What treatments specifically for IC have you tried? Just asking b/c Interstim is an invasive step that's usually only tried after a lot of other treatments have been exhausted.

[Sarojini]

The others are right -- Interstim is a major surgery that should be researched long and hard before you do it.

Make sure you have tried every available non-surgical treatment first, including instillations and other newer drugs, like Cytotec, before you resort to this surgery. Do not just dive into it, especially if you are newly diagnosed, because your doctor says it's the only thing left. It may be, but it might NOT -- you need to figure that out for YOURSELF.

While it has helped a lot of people, there are many others out there who have had serious complications from this.