Follow up to Urethral Burning

[jeanababy]

I saw my Gyn on Friday and he and I decided to treat my urethral burning as IC based upon ruling out everything else so far. I started on Elmiron 100 mg three times a day and Atarax 25 mg at night on Friday. He also wants me to change my diet starting today. I chose the "little food" diet because I felt that I would know for sure what bothered me doing it that way (although I am open to suggestions). I am eating turkey, rice, potatoes, carrots, pears, and water. In the handbook it recommended doing the diet for 10 days before adding back any other food. Is it really necessary to wait 10 days? I can tell that this is going to get old very quickly. The sad thing is, I'm burning more today than I have in a week and haven't eaten anything "bad". What if the burning doesn't stop after 10 days? Would that mean that restricting my diet won't help me?
Jean

[jala]

Boring is the word. I ate chicken and rice every day for a month. However, it did work. The first week I was on the restricted diet, I experienced additional burning, too. Then I figured out I needed to stop putting in seasoning. The burning stopped after I removed the pepper and used only butter and salt.

It took a few days for the old stuff to cycle out of my system. Once it passes, you will know it. The relief I felt afterword made it easier to tolerate the boring diet. Every time I added something wild in I paid for it in spades. When I ate the boring stuff, I felt way better.

I hope you stick with it for at least a while. I believe it will help you a lot in the long run. Best of luck. Jala.

[kadi]

You might want to try chicken instead of turkey. I read somewhere that turkey has more histamines... Also are you home-cooking your chicken? Storebought rotisserie chickens are loaded with additives...

It took a couple of weeks to notice a difference in my symptoms, but then it was really clear when I ate a food my bladder didn't like.

Wishing you better days soon!

[ICNDonna]

Some IC patients do have a problem with turkey --- the chicken suggestion is good one. Also, it's very important to get enough to drink. If you live in an area where there is clorine in the water supply, you might want to try drinking bottled spring water to see if that helps. The clorine dissipates with cooking so it should be okay to cook with tap water.

I hope the diet will help.

Sending warm healing thoughts,
Donna

[Katrina]

Sometimes people are opposites and are bothered by other things than the norm......that is a lot harder to figure out but sometimes it is like allergies figuring it out takes time. I hope that is not the case for you but other than what you are doing (pluss the change to chicken) it is the only other way diet helps that I know of if that doesn't work.



Good luck to you. I hope you do get better.

Best Wishes,

[Dani72]

Hi all my pain is in my urethra too. Sometimes if I take those over the counter bladder pills, Azo-Standard, They help with the pain. You can buy them in the drugstore or Walmart. They are not that expensive, so you might wanna give it a try. Won't hurt to try, it helps me and that is where all my IC pain is.
Danielle

[jeanababy]

The diet in the handbook said to eat any meat except chicken or veal so I used a frozen turkey breat that I had the butcher cut in half frozen so I don't have to cook it all at one time. I boil half of it in water then remove it and chop the meat up and put back in with rice to make sort of a stew. I have been using salt and a little butter but no pepper or other spices. I'm also drinking Evian. If chicken is OK that would be a whole lot easier to fix every day than turkey. Thanks for your input. I guess I'm just feeling a little down today. My family tells me, "at least you don't have cancer or something like that". And I am grateful to not have a terminal disease but it really wears me down emotionally fighting this unknown opponent every day for months with no improvement.
Jean

[kadi]

That sounds pretty tasty! Keep hanging in there. You're just now starting the process to figure out your trigger foods. Hopefully you'll start getting answers and feeling better soon!!