You know, life is a strange thing. You can go through it many, many different ways, and be all kinds of things. You could be an astronaut. You could be male. You could be trans. You could be depressed. You could be happy beyond all your wildest dreams. Or...you could be sick.
Wayyy back in 2011, I noticed that I was in pain. Constantly. My bladder hurt. My junk hurt. Sex hurt. There was something wrong. I couldn't sit through a 50 minute class. I couldn't play a full concert. I couldn't sit through meetings. Even as a kid, I had to go to the bathroom more frequently than nearly anyone else I knew, all with teasing remarks from my mother such as "Do you need to go see a doctor?" and other various things.
Well mom, yeah, I guess I needed to.
After several (extremely unpleasant) exploratory procedures and cancer scares and worries, I was finally diagnosed with a condition known as Interstitial Cystitis (IC) by doctor Bruce Armstrong. This is a condition that is almost exclusively found in women (yet another one of my unique traits, though I could do without this one) that feels essentially like a permanent Urinary Tract Infection (UTI for those of you keeping score at home). However, everything you would do to treat a UTI exacerbates the symptoms of IC. These symptoms are awful. Urinary frequency, urinary urgency, constant pain, nocturia, pelvic floor dysfunction, urinary retention, and in some cases, extreme incontinence. There is no cure for IC. In fact, doctors aren't even sure what -causes- IC. I was 20 and in college, what the hell was I doing with some old lady's disease? I had shit to do!
After several shattered relationships, trips to the doctor, medication experimentation, and trips to the bathroom, we finally found a medicine that seemed to make my life a little more livable; a tricyclic anti-depressant called amitriptyline. I was started off at the 25mg dosage, but after about a month Dr. Armstrong and I decided that wasn't quite strong enough, so we bumped the dosage up to 50mg, which I had stayed on until about a week ago.
The side effects of amitriptyline are awful. If you aren't depressed (which I wasn't) it can cause depression. It causes weight gain, mania, constipation, anxiety, clumsiness, dizziness, blurred vision, urinary hesitancy, loss of libido, headache, drowsiness, impotence, hyperglycemia, weakness, urinary frequency, gastrointestinal distress, and hair loss. And those are only the ones I experienced daily.
That last one really, really got to me, hence the now currently shaved head. I am proud and vain to a degree, and that is killing my ego. Hard. But, ever since I stopped the amitriptyline, it seems to be growing back. Slowly.
So, like I said, about a week and a half ago, I stopped taking it. Cold turkey. For a few days, I was fine. I avoided trigger foods, and surprisingly, I was doing well. Until that Saturday. I woke up bright and early with the worst pain I'd ever, ever experienced. I thought I had pulled or torn something in my back in my sleep. I thought my life was over. I basically crawled over to my roommate Geoff's door and begged him to take me to the hospital... I don't remember the trip, but apparently he drove pretty fast.
After some tests and pain meds, we found that I had two kidney stones. After about 48 hours, they made it from my left kidney to my bladder. That's where the real fun begins. Those two chunks of calcium wrecked my amitriptyline free life. It was just like before I was diagnosed. I couldn't (and still can't) really do anything. I've got a concert to review tonight that is going to be agonizing for me to sit through.
Fast forward to yesterday. While I was at the hospital for the stones, I got a lucky referral to urology doctors Steele and Hooper, much closer to home than Dr. Armstrong's Asheville office. So, I went to see Dr. Hooper on my lunch break. Dr. Hooper and I talked at length about my options, and we both agreed that amitriptyline is -not- what I needed to be on. So, after some thought and debate, he prescribed me two medications: 300mg of Elmiron (3 100mg capsules per day) and 10mg of Vesicare.
I just took the first capsule of Elmiron, and after some insurance shenanigans on Monday, I will take my first Vesicare.
I don't know how this will go, but, I figured I would document the journey. Here goes nothing.
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