and then, the day brings this.

i guess i've been dealing with this chronic issue since high school. maybe back then i didn't recognize that it was abnormal. i was used to my own habits. and so, if i had to get up to go to the bathroom four or five times a night, i just did. no big deal. and in college, when i set up my loft-style bed and began to wonder if it was too dangerous due to my several-bathroom-trips-a-night bladder, i thought other people were just like me. and then when i started to get what i thought were recurrent UTIs in my 20s, but the cultures never grew out anything, i just thought maybe my UTIs were different. even this year, in october, when i tried six different kinds of antibiotics to find absolutely no symptom relief, i still wanted to believe it was just an infection. because i'd read about a more chronic condition, and i didn't want to have it. the daily medication, the pain, the emotional turmoil. no, that was not for me.

yesterday, i learned it was. i finally got a diagnosis that makes sense. but it's also scary. it's several doctor's appointments a week scary. and it's prescriptions and co-pays at the tune of $500 a month scary. it's being on my own without someone to take care of me scary. it's losing my friends scary. it's becoming depressed scary. it's needing to function at work and in life scary. and, um, i'm frightened.

but, there is a light. i know there is. i started a new medication last night that is already working wonders on my symptoms. but, it makes me incredibly drowsy. (the doctor said that should go away in five days or so.) and with physical therapy and some other barbaric-seeming treatments, i have hope that i will beat this. some people deal with it their entire lives. suffering. in pain. i don't want to. not me. that is not what my life is going to turn out to be.

so, i'm going to keep up the running as long as i'm able. i'm going to stick to the nasty diet that's been recommended and i am going to try to find a way to pay for the medication and treatments without going into sever debt. because for the first time in a long time, i have a plan to stick to that can help me beat this (or at least the symptoms of it.) and even though all of the rest is scary. at least i know there is hope.