Flare

I’ve had a tough week inside my skull, a place I like to call my turtle shell.  It’s a place I retreat to, especially when things are not so spiffy, and sometimes I catch my thoughts ricocheting off of every wall.  

After several months of minimal, almost zero symptoms, last Thursday evening, my bladder decided she was being neglected, and therein began the worst flare I have had in months.  Still, there is no pain, which I should be so thankful for, but things are irritated and I can feel it, and I just really loved the months of not knowing it was there.  

Chances are that symptoms will go away soon, but to be totally transparent with you, every time I feel my bladder, I start to panic that it is again the beginning of the end.  There are some things I have now though, that I didn’t have then, and that is: history, knowing that things do eventually get better, and my IC sisters.  Talking to them helps me realize that I am so not alone on this journey.  When I first got sick, I thought I was probably the only person in her thirties and not about ready to die, that got this illness, but as it turns out, many get IC in their thirties, and younger.    

I started crying to my husband yesterday, sharing with him that I felt like a fraud.  Here I am telling everyone on here that there is hope and things can get better and then I got a flare again.  How is that for inspirational? Not much.  BUT, he and my IC sisters have helped me to understand that chronic disease is just that.  

There is hope that it will go away forever, but the truth is it will, for most, come and go.  I can tell you one thing for sure…It can get better. It did for me, and it will again, and it will for you too.

Part of overcoming the fear is believing, which I have said time and time again, so I am going to go ahead and trust my own words along with all of you that are fighting for your health, or just for something.  We can do this.  Life is still sweet even in the darkness that is chronic disease.