I am a huge advocate of mental illness on my blog here at Precarious Aquarius. Mental illness and issues are usually called “invisible illnesses” because it’s unseen to the naked eye. Tonight I am gonna talk about my physical illnesses that are not mental health related, but are still considered invisible illnesses.

I have a bladder disease called Interstitial Cystitis otherwise known as Painful Bladder Syndrome. I get bladder flares and inflammation due to what I eat and drink, where I am at in my menstrual cycle, etc. It’s not always painful, but the symptoms include UTI symptoms, flank and side pain, pelvic pain, etc. Right now I have severe right side abdominal pain (no I no longer have an appendix, so it isn’t that) I don’t really have urinary frequency or urgency, just pelvic and abdominal pain. SO it’s either one of two things; an actual infection or just a flare.

Usually I have bladder instillations performed weekly or biweekly but my urologist just retired so I haven’t had a procedure performed since November. A bladder installation is an injection of anti-inflammatory meds into my bladder to relax it so it’s not so ouchy. Usually these procedures are very painful to get because it’s installed via catheter but after two days I feel great for a couple weeks. Or until the next flare comes along which can hit at anytime.

So Dani… Why can’t you fix your diet or activities to reduce pain?

I do that exactly. I have been eating less junk food and drinking more water, but sometimes nothing stops a flare. I am laying in bed typing this in pure agony. I may smoke some cannabis to soothe the pain but I have so much homework that I have to do that I can’t do that quite yet. Well, I took a break since I finished a chapter, but I still have 30 more pages to read and then I must annotate the chapter for history. AND I have a biology lab and they are both due tomorrow.

I didn’t procrastinate. I had been doing homework all week leading up to today but I underestimated how much time it would take to finish theses projects. I would have done biology sooner, but I needed a living organism to study for my lab like a spider or worm or something similar. I took a hour out of my day digging in dirt all over the property for worms and nothing! The ground is too cold and it’s not season for them.

So tomorrow I gotta go to the pet store and find some small organism that I can observe for science.

Fuck it, I’m in pain. I’m gonna smoke and not be in pain.

This sucks.

Dani