I'm 25 and diagnosed with IC when I was 23. I'm taking elmiron 10...

Reality is there's no answer for IC yet. I have it too. There IS hope because IC has been elevated to a High Priority government health research disease (this is the most urgent priority).

For now, understand this: Think about the function of the bladder: to protect the body from the caustic elements filtered out of the blood (urine), and hold them for some good length of time. Your bladder isn't doing these. With kidney failure, we see serious metabolic changes so it's obvious it's in a failure state. But the bladder is so far downstream that the only way it can fail is to fail in it's role as a protective storage vessel - allowing the urine to burn you!

Fundamentally, Interstitial Cystitis is organ failure. It is an event of equal severity to kidney failure, diabetes, or liver failure. The problem is that it gives an unusual appearance for a failed organ - just PAIN PAIN PAIN because the bladder is just a storage sack.

Why do I say all this? Because you need to understand the gravity of the issue and that YOU ARE ENTITLED TO PAIN MEDICINE. Doctors failed for decades to treat IC adequately with pain control, but nowadays full pain management using strong opiates among other things is the norm.

Here's what you need to do. Go in and explain how horrible your pain is and the way in which it's ruining your life. Then ASK TO BE REFERRED TO A PAIN MANAGEMENT SPECIALIST. Pain management docs are the only ones comfortable prescribing high enough doses of opiates to control IC pain, so you need to get the referral. Docs often fail to explain WHY they can't give you opiates - it's because the medical board sometimes second guesses primary care doc's opiate prescriptions. Only pain management specialists really have "the keys to the kingdom", as it were.

Good luck. Wait a few years (it SUCKS I know) and the huge government research efforts now happening will start yeilding results.

Thank you for you assistance with this. Good idea about seeing a pain specialist. I of course never thought about that. I did just go to the doc last week and she put me on Prosed. Suppose to relieve urinary pain, burning, and spasm associated with UTI's, diagnostic procedures and inflammation. She also gave me some Enablex to try. I told her I was going to wait to try both of these one at a time until after I finish my Elmiron considering it doesn't seem to be helping as much as it did the first time. I was taking Elmiron last summer until I started spotting a little everyday. It seemed to be helping me quite a bit then. But, I stopped taking it and the spotting stopped. So, for some reason this time around taking it doesn't seem to be helping as much but I'm not spotting either. Go figure. If you don't mind me asking how long have you had it. When I was first diagnosed I felt like I was the only one out there. Then I had a bladder installation done which made my symptoms worse which lead me to doing research on it. I had no idea how many women were out there with it. Well, anyways thanks again for your help.