I am like many of you. I have Interstitial Cystitis and I have the InterStim. Since joining Facebook, I have met and formed a 'sisterhood' of friends who are also sufferers of Interstitial Cystitis, as well as one 'brother' that also has this incurable bladder disease. The bonds with these friends are deep and real and have become an important part of my life. I want to tell you about one particular 'IC Sister' (as we call ourselves) and share part of her journey here with you. She has given me permission to share with you. I am going to call her "Kate".
I must first start out by telling you about a concept I discovered some time ago while reading a book. The author of the book was the Psychic Sylvia Browne. The purpose of telling you this is not to promote Sylvia Browne in any way, shape, or form. I do find some of the things she has to say helpful but I don't take everything she says completely to heart. That being said, she devoted a portion of the book I was reading to women and their problems with low self-esteem. If you are like me, this is a part of ourselves as women that we are constantly fighting a battle with. If it's not the issue of our hair, it's an issue of our weight. If it's not this, it's that! We have this inner part of ourselves that is always questioning ourselves, even telling us that maybe we don't quite measure up to others. Well, Sylvia Browne stated in her book that whenver we had a 'negative' thought about ourselves we MUST IMMEDIATELY say FIVE GOOD THINGS about ourselves. At first I thought to myself, "how stupid is this?"...but then I caught myself and said, let me say five good things about the idea. I forget exactly what I said back then, but the concept stuck, and over a very short period of time, every time I had a negative thought about myself or someone else, I would immediately say five good things about me or them. This simple practice completely changed my life and my thinking and completely eliminated my poor self-esteem issues forever.
My friend Kate has been having a very difficult time. Her IC has been so bad that the pain has robbed her of much of her life. It has robbed her of the job she loved and dedicated her life to. It has robbed much of her home and family life. IC is no respector of these things. The pain it can cause as the disease progresses is very debilitating. The pain IC causes is very very much real. When a person is in pain, weary, and seeing the active life they once knew being replaced by more time in bed with heating pads and not having enough energy to do even the simplest of things some days, it can weigh very heavily on the spirit. It is very important to talk about our pain and what we are going through. After all, this pain IS a part of our life now, and I firmly believe that we need to bring awareness to this disease and pray for a cure. Kate was not having it easy. Not at all. I want to share some of her comments here on this blog, and I apologize if it feels like I am writing a book, but this is so important and worth sharing. I will begin her story in a new thread, simply called "Finding Kate"
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