Burning after urination

[Katarina8349]

Hello. Please advise. Every night for the last week I have been waking after 3-4 hours with a need to pee. I go to the toilet, pee - not often very much - and experience a severe burning after. It can take anywhere from 2 to 5 hours for the burning to subside. Obviously, I cannot sleep when the burning is severe. I apply ice, shower myself with cold water, put pads with cooling yoghurt, anything to take away the burn. It makes me feel so depressed! Strangely enough, whenever I am in another country, on a holiday, visit or for work, the bladder and urination symptoms give me a rest or at least do not affect me so greatly. But when I come "home", to my native country, and to my flat, the problems instantly come back: burning at night and sometimes during the day too are usually the main symptoms. I drink a lot. Does anyone else experience severe burn after urination (of the uretra and of the whole vulva)? Does anyone have tips on getting rid of it? Thank you.

[ICNDonna]

You might want to try drinking bottled spring water at home. I know of several ICers who don't do well with tap water.

Donna

[Katarina8349]

Thank you, Donna. Yes, that's the 1st thing I tried: only using bottled water. The tap water here is very hard. Unfortunately, it has not made much difference. I am also testing the effect of food on this: I have had spicy food in an Indian restaurant on a couple of occasions, which might have contributed to the burning. The reason why this is not an obvious link for me is because I have many times eaten spicy Thai curry without it bothering me. This condition really is so baffling! It's bad enough to feel the burning all the time .. but to have to be a bladder detective 24/7 is really exhausting! Is burning a common symptom of IC? I hardly get the urgency/frequency (thank God), but I burn a lot ..

[SuziQ64]

Hi katarina

I experience the burning as do a lot of others with IC. I found sticking to the IC diet reduced the burning significantly! Wow, what I would give not to have a reaction to Thai food!!!! How I miss it!

[Katarina8349]

Hi katarina

I experience the burning as do a lot of others with IC. I found sticking to the IC diet reduced the burning significantly! Wow, what I would give not to have a reaction to Thai food!!!! How I miss it!

Do you find Suzi that the spicy food always affects you negatively? Or are there times when your bladder can take it and other times when even a bit of pepper causes you a flare? Do the foods that flare you change or are they always the same? I spent a whole year on strictly vegan diet, designed by a nutritionist, which helped me physically but destroyed me mentally. After a year, when for some reason my bladder problems got worse, I decided I could no longer stick to the diet. I used the bladder flare as an excuse to get back to eating more or less normally (i still don;t eat meat, but I do eat fish, cheese, yoghurt, and the occasional dessert). I try to avoid acid foods (citrus, etc) but I do not go over the top as I think that we need a balanced diet and tomatoes, garlic, onions, etc are part of it! I went on a holiday recently and ate out most of the time, without the food giving me any trouble at all. But now, back at home, I feel that anything can be a danger to me: yoghurt, banana, almonds, barley coffee ... my urine burns.

[SuziQ64]

Prior to my suspecting IC (i thought i was pnly dealing with a yeast infection) I was eating normally, lots of tomatoes, onions, chilis. I can't honestly say what sets it off, other than cranberries). I know I had a yeast infection and that got the ball rolling. I actually did a lot of long distance cycling and had no complaints. I can't really say what sets me off now as I have been on a ridiculously strict diet, too strict perhaps. Looking back though, when I experienced a lot of urethral burning, I was eating aged cheddar. Once I stopped the cheese and onions the burning is virtually gone. I think salmon may also be a culprit. I'm still in the process of figuring this out. I promised myself I would continue this crazy diet for three months before adding more in. We'll see what happens. Oh, my anxiety shot through the roof when I realized it was IC, that along with stress is definitely a trigger!

Please let us know how you make out.

Suzi

[earthlady]

The only things I ever found for sure that bothered me were coffee, tea, wine, citrus, and vinegar. There were times I could eat a curried Thai dish and I was fine, and other times I wasn't. The things I eliminated were things that ALWAYS bothered me and the other things that were sometimes bothersome I just forgot about. I would have been down to eating rice and drinking almond milk, so I just said screw it- I was getting depressed from not eating much of anything. I mean how much can you eliminate really? I swear sometimes it has a mind of it's own as to when it flares and when it doesn't and it's sometimes impossible to figure out every trigger. Have you tried the baking soda shooters? This was a really quick fix for me when I had the burning going on. I would drink it twice one day and once again in the morning along with a couple tums. It's worth a try if you don't have high blood pressure.

[earthlady]

Forgot to add- If your frequency is up you may be getting urine burn on your skin which will really add to the skin irritation. I would use a spray bottle to rinse off after every time I peed and used vitamin e oil to help protect the skin. Some people use the A and D ointment for diaper rash.

[Katarina8349]

Thank you all for your feedback. I am going to try and commit to easy, non-irritating diet now and see what happens. I just don't like cooking and spending much time thinking about food. I miss the spontaneity of simply grabbing whatever tickles my fancy when out and about. If I had a personal chef at home and if there were IC-friendly-restaurants/diners all over town, I'd have no problem sticking to the diet! It's the time I have to spend thinking about what to eat, shopping for food, cooking, and washing up, that I mourn most! Not the chocolate, not the wine, not the lemons, ...

IC really is a temperamental condition. It seems that it has a mind of its own. And yet .. I really think that it is not separate from US. I like to believe that my bladder is my soul's advocate. That my soul, not having had much success talking to me in other ways, has found and uses the bladder to communicate to me. I know that something is wrong because I burn and hurt, but it's only recently that I decided to stop addressing the burns and hurts directly. Instead, I am trying to address the soul.
I have self-help books, I am starting therapy soon, and I have a homeopath.

It just seems too much of a coincidence that my problems disappear or at least really mitigate when I am on a holiday :). And that I am always worse when I rerurn to my home country, to which I have some negative and unresolved feelings. It seems a bit suspicious that the bladder reacts ok to Thai curry one day and badly to a bit of pepper the next. There MUST be an explanation! The bladder is not a separate entity with a mind of its own! It's part of us. It's just trying to tell us something!

I used to be very angry with my bladder. I hated it. I wanted to rip it out, replace it, or even - i dare to say - succumb to its supremacy completely and jump out of the window. But now I have decided (or come to a feeling) that the bladder is my pal. IT's my bladder after all. It has served me well after all for so many years and even now, despite the hiccups of pain and burning, it still functions. I have decided to lend it my ear but not too much. I mean, I will try to see what it is trying to tell me instead of fighting it or trying it suppress it. I know that I have unresolved issues, deep-seated in my subconscious as well as burried in my conscious under the clutter of other stuff. I shall clear the clutter and look face to face to what's underneath. I shall address the pain of the soul, which has started well before the bladder pain did! I suspect that if I succeed in understanding and healing my soul, my bladder pain will cease too.

No more urologists, no more gynecologists, no more crying over myself, wanting to die, and blaspheming the bladder for ridding me of my life. It is doing me a favour. It is incessant in trying to divert my attention to the things that matter and whose resolution will make my whole life a better one.

That's my current strategy :). Making friends with my pal bladder and listening to what it has to say ...

[SuziQ64]

Katarina,

I feel the same way you do. I feel I could have written the post myself!

Just thinking about your situation and was wondering with all of the burning you are experiencing. Do you have vulvar burning?

Thinking of you!

Suzi

[Katarina8349]

Yes, I do sometimes have vulvar burning. It's less frequent than the uretra/bladder burn but it does come on sometimes. Years ago, one doctor diagnosed me with Vulvodynia. I do not give much importance to the names the doctors give it though. They are just names which help them to talk about symptoms.
Doctors scare me with these names ... it's much better to think of burning as burning and pain as pain. IC comes in so many different forms that I simply do not believe that it is one illness. I trust that its symptoms are brought about by different reasons and that each one of us has to look at theirs. In the same way, different people will respond to different treatments. It is hard work to find the treatment that works - I think precisely because behind the symptoms lie problems which are the real deal. Buried deep within, we refuse to give them importance. May be we have forgotten them. We pushed them to the side. But nothing just disappears. Experiences, feelings, thoughts - they all have an impact on us ..