Rain, Pain and IC Awareness

Pain drops keep falling on my head.

So if you are on the east coast, you are likely like me locked in your home all weekend riding out hurricane Irene. We don't do hurricanes typically here in the northeast so most people are not dealing with it well. I needed to take a break from all the Irene news because watching too much of it makes you paranoid. So first I watched a good movie and then I began thinking about rain and pain.

I think there is some major connection between storms and chronic pain of any kind. Every time there is a storm coming, I begin to have IC related pain in addition to pain in a few other parts of my body which some doctors believe may be Fibromyalgia. Earlier tonight as the rain got worse a shooting pain went through my whole body: in my bladder, my thigh, my stomach and even side. It lasted for 20 minutes and was horrible. 

Do any other ICers experience rain pain? 

My mind is kind of all over the place tonite, so I also wanted to bring up IC awareness month. IC awareness month begins next week in September. It is very important to participate in IC awareness. Even if you do not have IC, you likely know someone who does. It is estimated that over 4 million Americans suffer from this painful condition. Many still are shamed into not talking about it openly, so there is a good possibility that you do have a co-worker, friend or acquaintance that has the condition and you don't even know it.

It is very easy to participate in IC awareness month. All you need to do is spread the word about the condition the way that you would if you were promoting diabetes awareness or cancer awareness. If you go through my blog posts you can find many posts describing the condition and you are more than welcome to use that information to promote awareness. 

The color of IC awareness is blue, so you can consider having a blue shirt day at school or work. 

Women have had painful bladder issues for ages and were forced to be silent for decades. We don't want to be silent anymore. We want a cure...and if we can't have a cure we at least want adequate pain management, educated doctors and reliable treatments. We do not have all of these things and it is a sin considering how advanced modern medicine is.

IC can be very painful and can cause people to experience a very low quality of life at times. This disease does not discriminate. If you do not want one of your loved ones to suffer from painful bladder syndrome tomorrow, you need to help us fight for awareness today.