For the month of April, I will be blogging every day (minus every Sunday but the 1st) about Interstitial Cystitis for The A to Z Blogging Challenge. Each day I will talk about a subject dealing with IC and my life living with it.

Today is S and I'm talking about Substitutions for foods.

When whole swaths of food and ingredients become off limits, figuring out substitutions is vital for IC. Some of the things I have to avoid are soy, anything spicy, anything citrusy, anything vinegary, MSG, caffeine, anything acidic. So lots of foods are now off limits to me. If I want something like Chinese or Mexican, I had to find a substitution. Fortunately, people with IC longer than I have figured out substitutions and shared them online. I've blogged about a few I've tried already.
 
Substitutions don't have to get fancy either. Sometimes it's as simple as using a different ingredient. Whenever I see a recipe that calls for buttermilk, I just use milk. Chocolate? Use carob. On occasion, I also just leave out the triggering ingredient. Like many things related to IC, it's all trial and error.

For the month of April, I will be blogging every day (minus every Sunday but the 1st) about Interstitial Cystitis for The A to Z Blogging Challenge. Each day I will talk about a subject dealing with IC and my life living with it.

Today is R and I'm talking about Recipes.

When it comes to IC, you kind of have to alter recipes. So many suddenly have ingredients you have to avoid or substitute. Sometimes, you have to accept that in the end, the new recipe may not taste the same, too. My hubby is always telling me to pretend the old recipe tastes like crap, but I haven't quite mastered that talent. I still remember how it used to taste.

Of course, if you're clever enough or willing, you can try creating your own recipes. I haven't done that completely from scratch, but there are a few I've come up with that are the result of looking at one recipe for guidance and going from there. Honestly, you just have to be unafraid of failing and making something that tastes horrible. When you know how you don't want it to taste, you have a point to build on.

For the month of April, I will be blogging every day (minus every Sunday but the 1st) about Interstitial Cystitis for The A to Z Blogging Challenge. Each day I will talk about a subject dealing with IC and my life living with it.

Today is Q and I'm talking about Questions.

Being diagnosed with a chronic illness means I need to ask my doctor a lot of questions. The saying there are no stupid question really applies here. It doesn't matter if the question is silly of obvious. ASK IT. And don't be ashamed of embarrassing questions. It's part of any doctor's job to deal with gross, bodily functions. Just tell yourself they've probably seen worse.

And be persistent with your questions. What got me diagnosed with IC fast was when I insisted to my doctor that the urgency tormenting me was not an UTI and something else. Don't let the doctor brush you off. Understand they have a billion other patients they're trying to squeeze into one day, but hold your ground, and demand answers.

For the month of April, I will be blogging every day (minus every Sunday but the 1st) about Interstitial Cystitis for The A to Z Blogging Challenge. Each day I will talk about a subject dealing with IC and my life living with it.

Today is P and I'm talking about Pushing Through the pain.

When it comes to pushing through in regards to chronic illness, I have one piece of advice: Don't.

Learning to listen to your body and not over do it is one of the hardest lessons I'm still struggling to learn. As i'm writing this, it's 7:30am and I just called my former boss to tell her I couldn't help out today. It took me two hours to convince myself to do that. She was in a bind. A cook quit this past weekend, then his cousin and friend who also worked for her decided they were no longer going to work there either. That left two cooks and one needed days off to take her mother down to Petoskey for doctor appointments. Meaning, she only had one cook, so she gave me a call, and naturally, I said yes I would help.

Everyone knew the reason I quit was because of my back, and were conscious of the fact. I didn't do heavy lifting, and I paid attention to how I felt. Still, two days working had me awake at 5:30am and in pain. I ignored it for an hour, then began to ask myself, "Should I go work a shift that will have me running on my feet for eight hours?"

I really struggled with that answer for two reasons. One: I didn't want to let people down. I told my former boss if she was in a bind to call me. I would help out. (And I did. I worked two days.) Two: I felt lazy. Was it really that bad? Both days I did work caused pain, but I had pushed through them. I could push through this, right? But also, both days didn't have a short walk down the hallway making me grimace.

In the end, I realized I had to listen to my body. It was telling me to to stop. Pushing through was a stupid idea. I feel bad for not being able to help out, but I know everyone involved will understand. We all know that if I push through and that results in worse damage, then the next time they need help, I'll have no choice but to say no.

For the month of April, I will be blogging every day (minus every Sunday but the 1st) about Interstitial Cystitis for The A to Z Blogging Challenge. Each day I will talk about a subject dealing with IC and my life living with it.

Today is O and I'm talking about Other Chronic Illnesses.

Along with Interstitial Cystitis, I also have Endometriosis and Iritis. Honestly, it seems you never get just one chronic illness. Something else always tags along. For IC. According to my urologist, a lot of people find they also have Endometriosis or IBS along with IC. It's like that whole area of your body just decides to hate you and make you miserable as a result.

Then sometimes you think you have one chronic illness only to find out it's an underlying cause. I spent a few months getting a bunch of tests done to see if that was the case for my Iritis. Only after ruling everything out, could I say no.

Nothing is simple with it comes to chronic illness. That's why it's important no matter what one you have to have a doctor who listens to you, to listen to your body, and be good to yourself.

When I was diagnosed, my doctor said IC was incurable. That's a downer to hear about any illness. But is it true?

Honestly, I can't say. Doctors say no, but people who have it and no longer seem to be suffering from it say yes. It's hard to know who to listen to. Doctors should be the experts on the subject of illnesses, but it's hard to discount a person's lived experience with a disease.

With IC being so individualized, maybe both are right. Some people no matter what they do, can't find relief from IC while others find ways that eases their pain and find they can reintroduce foods back to their diets. I've heard people both say safe foods cause them pain and no foods don't. Although, I do have to admit, on one of the IC boards on FB, there have been claims about natural healing that are hard to swallow. The best course of action may be to listen to your doctor, but be willing to try something unconventional.

For the month of April, I will be blogging every day (minus every Sunday but the 1st) about Interstitial Cystitis for The A to Z Blogging Challenge. Each day I will talk about a subject dealing with IC and my life living with it.

Today is M and I'm talking about Meal Planning.

One of the things that drove me to make this blog was the trouble I had finding IC friendly recipes while researching how to meal plan on an IC diet. Everything I found had trigger ingredients, and often I had to discard the entire recipe.

Meal planning has been useful for my IC because being on such a restricted diet (seriously, it's easier to tell you want I can eat instead of what I can't) means the foods I can eat are limited. You can only eat the same thing so many times before you get bored (unless it's grill cheese. I can eat those all the time ^_~)

​Plus, I've discovered I often have to skip the cheaper option. (Two dollar tuna anyone?) Meal planning helps me budget and keeps what I eat fresh and exciting. If you want to learn about how I made an IC friendly meal plan (or any food restriction meal plan. Just plug in your food restrictions and plan around them), check out my post How to make an IC friendly meal plan.

I do have to say, the best part of meal planning is the fact it opens up my free time. I plot out two weeks worth of meals, and then I don't waste anymore time wondering, What do I make for dinner tonight? I already know and that leaves more time to binge watch GT Live on Youtube.

For the month of April, I will be blogging every day (minus every Sunday but the 1st) about Interstitial Cystitis for The A to Z Blogging Challenge. Each day I will talk about a subject dealing with IC and my life living with it.

Today is L and I'm talking about Limitations.

​When you go from doing whatever you want to having no energy for the most basic tasks, it takes an adjustment. And it’s not a quick one either. You go through a period of denial where you push yourself in the hopes of getting back to how you used to be.
 
But you have to accept a new reality (although, you don’t have to like it) and learn to navigate it. How much energy something will use is assessed. Where the bathrooms are is mapped. Is medication packed? Does that restaurant have food you can eat? Simple things become so much more complex, and if you don’t have the energy for it and know pushing through will mean you’ll be bedridden the next day, then you cancel no matter how much you want to go out. You have to make wise choices instead of fun choices.

For the month of April, I will be blogging every day (minus every Sunday but the 1st) about Interstitial Cystitis for The A to Z Blogging Challenge. Each day I will talk about a subject dealing with IC and my life living with it.

Today is K and I'm talking about Keeping A Food Journal.

There's actually two types of journals I got into the habit of keeping after my diagnosis with Interstitial Cystitis: a food journal and a pain journal. Both helped me figure out what foods I ate that triggered me because I could look at what I ate and then the time I felt pain and look for patterns.

Although, I don't keep up with the food journal now that I have a handle on most of my trigger foods, I still keep it around. (My pain journal I keep up with more because I also use that for my Endometriosis pain and other pains I want to track.) It was really helpful in the beginning and I recommend anyone with Ic to get a notebook and start journaling their food. It will really help you identify trigger and safe foods.

For the month of April, I will be blogging every day (minus every Sunday but the 1st) about Interstitial Cystitis for The A to Z Blogging Challenge. Each day I will talk about a subject dealing with IC and my life living with it.

Today is J and I'm talking about Judgement.

Today's post related to a few things I touched on in my I post. I highlighted how an invisible illness often means people judge you because they can't see what's wrong. It almost makes me want to cart around my images from my scopes so I can say, "There, now you can see what's wrong." When I worked, I was constantly saying I didn't get the luxury of getting better. I felt like I had to remind my coworkers that I was sick because they would forget since it was invisible.

It also left me feeling judged––both by myself and others. I often felt like I was just being a wuss or I should be grateful that it's not worse as some stories from others I have read. I wondered if people didn't believe me, thought I was exaggerating, or flat out lying. They'd think less of me because I looked fine, so why couldn't I just try harder? I don't know if anyone actually thought those things, but those thoughts went through my mind.

Not to mention there really are people who treat others with invisible illnesses that way. They can't see it, so the person must be exaggerating or lying. How frustrating is that? Especially coming from a family member or friend.

That's why we should never judge someone using handicap stuff who doesn't look sick. Lots of illnesses are invisible. My pain is just as valid as my aunt's.