Her physicians treated her for cystitis with antibiotics. Even though no special cultures could be grown, her symptoms of pain and spasms seemed to be purely a problem of the bladder. When no relief was achieved, she was sent to a urologist who performed a cystoscopy and made a biopsy of the tissues looking for some problem that might be identified through stains. The concept of interstitial cystitis, a very painful and chronic disease of rather severe inflammatory process, was the diagnosis given. There is a program of treatment for this using medications and repeat cystoscopic examinations.
Interstitial cystitis is a difficult disease.
When her pain continued in spite of treatment by medications injected into her bladder, she was sent to a medical school where the Department of Urology again performed the examination and came up with the same diagnosis. Her pain continued, she began not to be believed by her physicians, and she started buying narcotics on the street. Eventually she ended up in a methadone clinic to control the pain. Even that did not work well for her. Upon consideration of her circumstances, I asked the local pathology department if they had any tissue remaining from her biopsy of six months previous, and they did.