So… where do I go from here? I bit the bullet and decided to shell out for a private doctor. I live in London so I am fortunate to have a huge choice. I don’t have heaps of money but I do have a need to get back to work and so get diagnosed and treated asap. Sooner than the NHS will allow.
To cut a long story short the lovely urologist has all but confirmed my fears. He thinks it’s likely I have interstitial cystitis. I’ll be going for more tests next Monday but it seems a formality. But he was very positive and optimistic that he could help me so… fingers crossed, I guess.
As a mum – which is the focus of this blog, not illness – how does this make me feel?
First-of-all, overwhelming guilt. All I want now is to be the mother that my amazing daughter deserves. I want to go on adventures with her. Match her energy. Infuse her with positivity, confidence and joy. Right now I wake up every morning with a heavy heart. I’m not sleeping as well because I can’t make it through without going to the loo. So I feel guilt from the moment I look into her excited eyes in the morning. Because I can pretend most of these things but I cannot feel them right now.
I can’t travel further than the local park – because at least there are toilets there. I am struggling to feel optimistic because I have spent too much time scouring the internet about this condition and do not see many happy outcomes.
I feel regret; for the beautiful, carefree times with her that I am worried I have lost forever. Regret that my excitement for our future is being suffocated by almost overwhelming anxiety.
Because at the root of all this is one defining question: will this ever go away? Will I spend every day feeling as though my bladder is at bursting point; a physical feeling that distracts me from my daughter and intrudes on our time together? I have an image of a mother I never wanted to be. Always suffering. Always sad. Excluded from adventures and mayhem.
I hope, hope, hope that my consultant’s optimism is well-founded. That, despite the horrors filling the internet, he can return me to how I was before. That he can give me my life back as it was. It has only been gone for two-and-a-half weeks but, facing a diagnosis of a chronic condition, I am so afraid my life will never come back now and my beautiful daughter will lose out on the mother she was supposed to have.