My Chronic UTI Recovery 1 Year Later: 80% Healed

Almost one year ago, I was bedridden, housebound, and then eventually in a wheelchair from a severely painful bladder. I ate the same 5 foods through half a year and became sickly thin at 79 lbs (but that did heal my bladder substantially by eating the same alkaline raw veggies over and over, lol). Today, I am able to walk, shop and eat way more foods. I am not fully recovered, but I am hovering at about 75% - 80%. Believe it or not, there are days where I am almost symptom-free and there are many days where I forget my bladder for 4 - 6 hours. It's incredible, it's amazing, when back then, I attempted 2 failed suicides because my bladder felt like it was being hit with a hammer 24/7 and I was weeing razor pain knives out of a urethra that felt swollen and painful. I went from someone who could only crawl to a toilet and lived in the washroom 24/7, screamed and cried to be killed, ignored by specialists and doctors in my city (Vancouver BC) to now someone who can run over to the mall and shop to eat out with friends.

*** PS, the doctors on the right hand side column of this blog were all helpful and/or listened to me and/or gave me advice and/or helped with my healing. I thank them greatly for their thoughts, advice and/or personal handling of me. There are a few more doctors who have helped me, but they are GPs who don't want to be listed on this blog, or are no longer taking patients in so there is no point to list them on the blog. By the way, I should tell you that I reached out to over close to 30 medical practitioners and most slammed the door in my face. It's a rough world out there, that so many "medical experts" will turn you away or treat you like a number, leave you feeling desperate, hopeless, and literally leave you to die (like me, who had hung myself twice)! So yes, it's a cruel cruel world out there. ***

It has almost been exactly 1 year since I got my chronic UTI (which was thought to be interstitial cystitis, pelvic floor dysfunction, bladder pain syndrome, inflammatory bladder etc). I first got my Urinary Tract Infection sometime on Feb 18, 19, or 20 in 2018. And if you read My Story, I talk about how it led to this monster chronic UTI that gave me severe bladder pain that ended me up in a wheelchair and housebound / bedbound and everyone thought I had interstitial cystitis and several docs were like "there is no cure for you." If it weren't for Aperiomics and MicroGen DX, I would NEVER have found out that it was a UTI all along. I mostly stuck to MicroGenDX though because they can detect what antibiotics your pathogens are resistant to. So yeah doing DNA next generation testing SAVED MY LIFE.  
Ok, so fast forward one year later, this is where I am today.

Today I am:

•  80% better. I even have a few days where I am almost symptom-free. Most of my mornings now are symptom-free, and then I get the frequency in the afternoons and evenings. There have been a lot of ups-and-downs. I was stagnant at 70% for months and then slipped backwards sometimes to 55% - 65%. Healing was not linear and very stressful to predict. As of late February 2019, I am now 80%, but I can easily slip backwards or forwards as this illness is very unpredictable.

• still eating clean. I still eat an alkaline 80% vegetarian 20% poultry & fish diet. I still really try to avoid dairy, gluten, sugary foods, starchy sugary veggies, foods that grow Candida/Yeast (like mushrooms, yams, etc), red meats (super acidic), sauces, seasonings, salad dressings, all things soy. I also eat raw vegetarian (most alkaline) and do mostly steamed and boiled foods. Baking, frying, and stir-frying makes food acidic, so I try to avoid those cooking methods.

• I'm able to eat a lot more things however. I do have some naughty days where I eat pizza (0 tomato sauce, no tomatoes), pho noodles or fried noodles, sashimi (no vinegar sushi rice), ice cream, pancakes, cakes as long as I make sure it's clean, has no MSG, no filler ingredients, and I sometimes take them with Prelief. Again, like I mentioned, I only take Prelief very sparingly as I do not want to be someone who is addicted and reliant on Prelief to function. I want to keep my foods as clean as possible to heal my gut and bladder as much as possible.

• still only drinking FIJI water as my main beverage. You'll see in my old posts why I chose FIJI water. I drink water, fresh cilantro or parsley or cucumber in water for added flavor, organic cornsilk tea, organic slippery elm tea, organic marshmallow leaf tea (not marshmallow root as it bothers my bladder, organic buckwheat tea, and organic chamomile tea. I also make my own veggie broths, chicken bone broths and fish bone broths (tilapia, rock cod) with 0 salt in a crock pot.

•  I stopped all nuts and nut butters in November 2018. Originally you'll see I was doing a lot of those, but a TCM doctor told me that nuts could be inflammatory for my bladder. If you don't know what a TCM doctor is, it's mentioned many times in my old posts.

•  I stopped almost all supplements in December 2018. You might have seen my September 2018 Youtube video of all those 20 supplements I took. Today, I am only on 2 things:
  1) WestCoast Mint D-Mannose powder (2000 - 6000 mg per day = 1 - 3 teaspoons per day)
  2) Ultraflora Women's Probiotics (equivalent to Jarrows Fem-Dophilus -- I can't get Jarrows in Canada but it was recommended to me by a US urologist). I found that taking less supplements healed my bladder. In fact, the buffered Vitamin C and BladderEase were hurting my bladder probably because of the citrus, but don't quote me on this, because I know some patients who did awesome on buffered Vitamin C and the famous recovered interstitial cystitis patient Jessica Parks on Youtube healed using BladderEase! My bladder just couldn't tolerate any citrus at all. Desert Harvest was pretty awesome, I took their aloe vera pills instead of Elmiron for my bladder pain. I know some patients who feel an immense difference taking Desert Harvest as well.

• I am still spending huge amounts on healing the illness and finding the root cause. I am now close to the $11,000.00 Canadian mark on spending on this, and the medical bills are still climbing on it. I have found out SO much, and have so much information of the gut and bladder connection, but I will compile it all into a big post summary one day when I have time. But yeah, food - gut - bladder -- holy cow, there is a huge connection.

•  After meeting many patients from around the world - patients of Ruth Kriz that I check in with weekly, patients of Professor Malone-Lee and his team that I check in with monthly, a patient of Dr. Michael Hsieh and a patient of Dr. Roscoe Nelson that I talk to almost daily, patients of other urologists and infectious disease doctors that I casually check in with once every 2 or 3 months, I have learned SO MUCH of the different healing methods that other patients used. Their healing ranged from: long-term oral antibiotics, antibiotic instillations, inflammatory instillations, ozone instillations, TCM, certain diets like Candida / GAPS / vegan / alkaline, anti-fungals, Nystatin (see my blog post on this) etc. Some of these methods worked for patients, some didn't, some made them worse, etc. Everybody was different, but I learned that there were so many different ways. However, one thing that resonated across the board was that everybody who was healing did it with a DIET. A strict clean alkaline diet that was comprised of mostly vegetables, non-red meats, and neutral-to-alkaline water was a huge part in keeping symptoms at bay and/or healing the symptoms. It definitely played a HUGE part in my healing.

• Summary of things that healed me: ALKALINE CLEAN DIET OF UNPROCESSED FOODS. I have posts everywhere about this so I'm not going to repeat myself. TCM for my extreme bladder pain. I have a detailed TCM post so again not going to repeat it here. Some supplements helped, some didn't, some made it worse. Pelvic Physio helped for sure! Even if my cause was just from the bugs, wow, she found painful trigger points internally inside my pelvis. There was one part that hurt like hell and she helped release it slowly over the months. It no longer hurts now. You'll see old posts talking about pelvic physio and why it helps, so I don't want to repeat myself. Antibiotics sadly did nothing!! Only Ciprofloxacin was working, but then my ecoli got smart to Cipro and mutated into super Cipro-resistant bugs and no other antibiotics could kill them. Grr. Oh and if you're going to ask me about what I did about emotional healing, haha, I'm not into that kind of stuff. Like yoga, meditation etc, ok I don't mean to be rude, but I find that stuff flaky and I'm not into that stuff. Like someone on a forum said "go do Yoga". Haha, ok, back in my painful days, how could I have done Yoga when any pose would make me wee myself on the mat or splash wee onto a person behind me, or meditate when my urethra was burning on fire, lol. So I focused on healing me PHYSICALLY because I wanted REAL HARDCORE RESULTS. Someone even said, "Just believe you will be healed, or read the Secret (Law of Attraction) and your bladder will recover." Yeah ok, whatever, lol. I'm a very logical computative type of girl, so all that emotional stuff is too wishy-washy for me. It might work for others, but for me, no thanks. I don't want to ride on cotton candy clouds with unicorns chanting for my bladder to heal. I will research, collect scientific evidence, talk to specialists, try all sorts of physical methods to fight the root of the problem, and try to find a way to heal. PS, I did not work during the entire time I was ill, and I still don't work, and I won't work until I hit 100% recovery. So there, that's an emotional thing that helped in my recovery if that's what you're looking to hear. Oh PS, I never had any trauma, sexual trauma, abuse, life problems, financial probs or whatever, that everyone thinks would have triggered a chronic UTI/IC. I had an awesome happy good life, so diseases can happen to anyone, geez! Why does everyone think you had to have a hard life to get a disease? Everyone is like "Were you stressed? Did something bad happen?" and I'm like "Uh.... I got this UTI after eating an exotic dinner meal that triggered a bad stomach ache which triggered me feeling nauseous which triggered me into not drinking which made a UTI, then it became chronic. So yeah, that's how unexciting my story is." Before I got this weird UTI situation, I was hm... shopping, eating out a lot, taking selfies and hanging out with friends, enjoying life, so... lol, sorry, I have nothing traumatic or freaky to talk about. Like I said, diseases can HAPPEN to ANYONE!

• No sex. This is paramount. During this entire time, and still today while I am healing, I did not have sex with my husband. None, zero, zilch. I noticed that patients whom I talked to, when they had sex, they would get worse again. They either re-infected themselves somehow from sex, or the muscles got tense and worse, etc. My pelvic physiotherapist says that sex can tense up the already stressed out pelvic muscles and that's why symptoms can get worse. I don't get why people want to have sex while they have this disease. I have no sex drive while I have this. And yes, I read about how some people were saying they were scared their partner would leave, or that their partner did leave because of this. Personally for me, if a partner left me for this, I would say good riddance because I wouldn't want to be with someone who leaves me for a disease. In sickness and in health - weren't those in the wedding vows? 


• When I am fully 100% recovered, I will release my YouTube videos. I want to make sure I focus right now on healing and not engaging socially with any UTI/IC patients, because I found that reading Instagram messages and blog emails from UTI and IC readers was stressing me out and slowing down my healing. So I've taken a break away from my Instagram and YouTube, and took off my email from this blog. If you have questions, just visit the FAQ section on who you can reach out to for help, since I am no longer taking in emails. I have made a lot of connections from this bladder saga, so reach out to any of the groups, websites, support groups, friends, and medical practitioners I have listed. Hope somebody from those groups can help with your recovery somewhere, somehow. It was how I started to get better, by learning and sharing knowledge and support with others during my most painful times. Now that I am better, I have weaned myself away from those groups because as I recover, I want to start closing this chapter behind me and stop engaging in bladder emails and chats since it only reminds me of the trauma that I once went through.