Traditional Chinese Medicine for UTI Bladder Pain: From Wheelchair to Walking (A Bit)

By June 14th, I purchased a walking cane because I could no longer walk for more than 5 minutes without support. My bladder was hurting so much that just any movement was sending me into pain. By the time June 20th came, my family and I were discussing about moving me into a wheelchair because I was in extreme bladder pain! I saw a GP to do a vaginal smear to check for infections, but I pretty much knew that it would be coming back clean. Again, everything that has been going on with my several GPs has not come back useful, because they aren't really equipped to handle this. What you and I have are complex and out-of-the-textbook for them. A drop-in doctor in saw me walking in with a cane into her office because of my bladder, and was basically, "You poor dear, I'm sorry you have this, but I don't want to deal with it" kind of vibe.

Have you ever seen a doctor who will spend hours and hours to help you? I have not. Doctors just want to get you in and out of their offices as quickly as possible. A patient once told me "The doc just wants to see patients as quick as possible to collect their yearly $100 - 200k salary." But I don't think that's the case for all doctors. There are some very compassionate and kind doctors out there, but they may not have the knowledge to help our case, and honestly they can't spend hours and hours on us. Our situations require something outside the norm to search for help.

Anyway, my mom introduced me to a Traditional Chinese Medicine doctor. He healed one of her friends, who is a 70 year old elderly woman. This woman had a similar problem as me. She had a UTI that had blood in the urine. She was in the hospital and given antibiotics. Her UTI was clearing up, and then it returned as it was not fully resolved. She returned to the hospital and was given antibiotics again, and the UTI was resolving but then came back. She gave up on them and went to see the TCM doctor. In 10 visits, he cured her (this would equate to about a month's worth of herbal medicine to drink). Now, I was feeling a bit skeptical about TCM, but I was pretty desperate since this bladder pelvic pain was now crippling me to the point of going into a wheelchair. I had emailed my specialist what was happening to me (ie, bladder pain so severe that it was disabling me to walking with a cane) on June 14th, and did not get a reply yet. The Canadian healthcare system can be very slow since it is a free healthcare. So I decided to go for the TCM. What did I have to lose? I was losing my ability to walk at this point and medical practitioners obviously didn't care about that. As a patient, I'm just another "number" to them, one of the many people on their long list who need help. Or I was a complex case but not life-threatening so I can be swept under the rug. Or they didn't want to deal with it since they have hundreds... thousands... of patients and are too busy.

I went to a Traditional Chinese Medicine doctor named Dr. Tuen Fan Chan on June 23 and 26 at G & R Ginseng Trading inside the New 2000 Supermarket at Empire Centre in Richmond BC Canada. He speaks fluent Cantonese and a bit of English. He has been hailed by Richmond Chinese locals as an extremely knowledgeable TCM doctor. He has healed many locals of their previous ailments, whom I met in the waiting area to tell me their stories. I cried because I was feeling hopeful again. He prepared the herbs for my UTI case. I can't speak Chinese that well, so I used Google translate to translate my English words into Chinese kanji and printed it out on a piece of paper to hand it to him. He prepared the herbs for me (2 hot bowls of bitter medicine per day). At the Chinese herbal store he is at, you can pay $4.00 for them to cook the Chinese medicine. Most patients go home and do it, but at first, I paid it every time because I don't know how to cook Chinese medicine. I've been taking TCM daily (twice a day) since June 23. I learned how to cook it by buying a Sunpentown Chinese Medicine Cooker on Amazon. It's so easy, you just put the herbs in, fill the amount of water that the TCM doctor tells you and let it cook in there for 1.5 hours. Then I turn it off at 1.5 hours and pour into a cup or bowl to take my TCM herb medicinal tea.

What a TCM prescription looks like with all the herbs. I can't read a single thing on this.

Herbs inside the bags

My Sunpentown Chinese Medicine Cooker

My Chinese medicine cooker with Chinese medicine herbs in the bags

When I found out my MicroGenDX DNA Next Generation Sequencing test results of my bacteria on June 22's post, I translated that into Chinese on Google for him. He modified my Chinese medicine a bit more from that lab result, and I have been feeling tons better. I can finally walk for goodness' sake. So I am a believer in a mix of both modern Western medicinal technology + TCM (thousands of years of herbal knowledge from China). The MicroGenDX lab test was able to pinpoint further the clues to help him modify the medicine.

After 2 weeks of no answers from medical practitioners/specialist and bladder pain deteriorating me into a walking cane and further into a wheelchair with the pain growing each day.... I finally got the pain cut down by Traditional Chinese Medicine after drinking TCM twice per day. I'm still taking it now, and will continue to take it as I await Western technology treatment. But I'm not in good health nor recovered. I'm slowly walking up to 15 minutes and still in pain, then it's back to a wheelchair. But it is now better than laying on the ground writhing in severe pain and wishing to die.