A story of recovery

One of the blogs I follow on here is called WANDERLUSTED: Travel, Beauty, Fitness, Life. This lady Jess lived through a bad case of IC and does a fantastic job telling her story - one of the things that prompted me to tell mine. It's also hilarious.

Be sure to read Part I and Part II
http://wander-lusted.blogspot.com/2012/02/how-i-healed-my-interstitial-cystitis.html
http://wander-lusted.blogspot.com/2012/02/how-i-healed-my-interstitial-cystitis_23.html

And her awesome FAQ page here, because she got so many responses from her post: 

http://wander-lusted.blogspot.com/p/ic-faq.html

This is a great story because it's so real. 19 year Jess who comes down with IC and cures herself in 4 years. I CANNOT imagine going through this as a 19 year old. It has shaken me as a 30 year old, with all the resources that I have available to me. And Jess makes it seem like there is a real roadmap to recovery. She sums it all up like this at the end:
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So to summarize, this is how I went from being a girl crying on the bathroom floor to leading a normal life:

1. Strict elimination diet
2. Omitting all caffeine and acidic beverages
3. Avoiding products with strong dyes or fragrance/essential oils
4. Drinking 2-4 ounces of aloe juice every day
5. Drinking a cup of herbal tea whenever I felt a flare or symptoms of a UTI

Unfortunately there is no magical cure for IC. But I feel that if you are strict with your diet that you can achieve a very manageable condition, and perhaps even heal, like myself and lead a perfectly normal life.
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It took her four years to return to a normal life. But the point is SHE RETURNED TO A NORMAL LIFE. Many people with IC never do. My hope is that I can heal up even faster because I was able to find information and stories like this so quickly and begin my fight sooner. Speaking with my friend Rachana who struggled with her IC for years, I told her that I wish I had a roadmap - a timeline, where I could tell myself that by 2015 that this will be all over. That I will graduate from film school and go back to Africa and working on films and doing anything. Go back to that bubbly, wild, life-loving spirit I was before this hit. She responded to me: "YOU WILL BE PAIN FREE IN 2015! You have to visualize that! In fact, you will be in pain free before 2015! By the end of this year!"


Cultivating hope has been my mantra for some time. I've only been experimenting with the diet for a month and a half now, so it's early in the game, but my hope is that in the next 6 months I can start to feel some real relief. That I won't be that girl running to the bathroom four times during a one hour class. I don't expect I will be able to drink for many years. That's hard too, but I can deal with that. I have a very important goal that I am dedicated to - being able to return to the person I knew as myself. Getting my identity back. And getting back to life.