The blog of IC Network founder Jill H. Osborne, sharing her comments, thoughts, ideas and actions happening in the IC and pelvic pain movement.
I apologize in advance if this column offends anyone but we do, on occasion, need to talk about intimacy and how IC can impact that. For those of you who know me, you know that I'm very direct about the issues that we struggle with. I believe that IC can strengthen rather than weaken our [...]
We’ve long passed those days when we believed that IC was an incurable bladder disease. Today, we consider IC/BPS a pelvic pain syndrome that can involve structures beyond the bladder, often the pelvic floor muscles. Dysfunctional pelvic floor muscles can trigger all of the symptoms we normally associate with the bladder, including frequency, urgency, pressure [...]
Though my IC (i.e. bladder pain) officially began when I was 32, I spent much of my 20's struggling with many of the conditions we now know are related to IC. I had vulvodynia in high school and college that felt like a painful yeast infection. Despite many trips to the doctor, they rarely found [...]
Clinging To Old Treatments For IC/BPS Could Hold You Back If you had been diagnosed with IC/BPS forty years ago, odds are you would have been prescribed antibiotics, given urethral dilations and/or referred to a psychiatrist under the mistaken assumption that IC was all in your heads. Twenty years ago, that same patient might have [...]
Last Spring, I announced that I was having an emergency surgery for possible uterine cancer. It was May 23, 2017 and I was terrified. Absolutely, completely and totally terrified that they would find active tumors and, worse (yes, worse) that the surgery would exacerbate my IC and pelvic pain. Let me start by saying [...]
ICN Education & Support Phone LineWill Be Closed While Jill Recovers From SurgeryNext week I’ll be recovering from an urgent hysterectomy and waiting anxiously for my uterine biopsy results. This saga began last fall when I started spotting. Of course, I hadn’t had a period in about two years so contacted my doctor and asked for [...]
Does BIG PHARMA control the IC movement? The answer is NO. In fact, big pharma abandoned the IC movement almost a decade ago. The last big pharmaceutical company to dedicate money to IC was Ortho Urology, makers of Elmiron. They had walked away even before Elmiron went off of patent. The makers of the other oral medications (Atarax, [...]
If you love getting a manicure or pedicure, a recent announcement by the Environmental Working Group will make you rethink the brands you might be using. Polishes by Sally Hansen, Essie, OPI, Revlon, Wet N Wild, Spa Ritual, Orly, theBalm, Nuance, Maybelline and Beauty without Cruelty contain a chemical called triphenyl phosphate (TPHP), known for its endocrine-disrupting [...]
If a picture speaks a thousand words, then the art of Atara Schimmel speaks volumes about pelvic pain and pudendal neuralgia. She's just won the ADA poster contest sponsored by the city of Boston for her entry "We Will Be Heard," one of her Project Angel series which is dedicated to raising awareness for pelvic [...]
Twenty five years ago this month, the American's With Disabilities Act (ADA) was passed to stem the tide of layoffs and overt discrimination that occurred (and sadly still occurs) in workplaces across America. Earlier this month, I blogged about IC hero Bard Alan Finlan who spent years struggling with Verizon over his request for reasonable accommodation [...]
