I actually was looking up an old blog I had started to discuss my journey and decided to post a note of hope here for those who are newly diagnosed (or just needing some inspiration). 

So, in short, my symptoms are now nearly 100% in remission. 

I was diagnosed in mid 2009 with vulvodynia and IC. Dear Lord. Sex became excruciating somewhere around January 2009. I had been diagnosed with BV in the months before that, and while taking some antibiotics helped, the pain always returned. When I met my boyfriend in August of 2009 I started having the all too familiar UTI symptoms... without the infection. One morning in November 2009 it became incessant. Truly, I could not leave the bathroom for an entire day and was confined to my room for about two months, fearful of being far from a bathroom. My urethra was burning, I had a constant urge to pee and it felt as though my bladder was on fire. You know the drill, I'm sure! 

I moved in with my parents shortly after the symptoms began in full force. I gave up on life. I dumped my boyfriend, refused to get a job and devoted myself to finding a cure. My diagnosis was dire: IC. It will never go away. Well, I went to acupuncturists, IC specialists, surgeons, doctors, naturopaths, ayurvedic practitioners, massage therapists and psychics! HELP!!!!! No one could. Truly, nothing changed the pain I experienced day after day, every single time I peed. I changed my diet, fasted for two weeks on juice and one week only on water, moved, got a job, lost a job, tried different partners, started meditating, prayed my heart out, was celibate for a year, ate every herb I could find, tried douches and filled my medicine cabinet with various creams, pads and liquids. Truly, I think I spent somewhere around $20,000. Holy ****. Nothing made it worse. Nothing made it better. In May of 2010 I started experiencing rectal pain... and I spent a day screaming. Okay. It was bad. 

About a year ago I moved to Kauai. There, I met an exorcist who prayed with me daily in the name of Yeshua. I simply asked God to reveal to me, in the presence of another individual, barriers between me and Him (the Source), curses placed upon me, and any spirits associated with them. We renounced the barriers, we broke the curses and he rebuked the spirits in my soul. Listen, I was not quite a believer in exactly this sort of thing beforehand, but slowly I felt transformed. By the time I left the island, after about seven months, the pain was ever present but no longer plagued my thoughts and brought me down into a lowly depression as it had before. I had simply begun to accept that the pain was not something I could cause, cure or control. If I could, I would have! I simply turned my focus back on taking care of myself... a totally different thing than trying to change the pain I was in actually. I started treating myself with a little more love, like taking a hot bath and nurturing my body, as I would a suffering friend. Gradually, the pain ebbed. 

I moved back in with my parents about seven months ago. It's been a tough summer and fall, full of stress and challenges. I still experience pain from time to time (around my period, if I drink a seltzer water, if I'm dehydrated), but, weirdly, it's at about 5% of what it was. There are now times in which I can pee pain free. Whoa. Plus, I can have amazing sex again without suffering dramatically the next day. What can I say? This is something myself am struggling to believe, day to day. Little by little. However, I must let you know that there is hope. If you are a person who prays, perhaps find a good friend or priest to pray with you. 

Relax

How many times have I been told I must relax by doctors? They look at me and see a nervous wreck, and yet, today, one told me, "you know I love you." Wow. He said it in passing, a slight, but I was struck by those words given by this man. He also told me I had an infection, and that I will most likely be put on IV antibiotics by the end of it... I imagine perhaps a great healing in my body will need to take place after it is rid of the things which plague it. I imagine being scoured from the inside out, leaving my body and soul raw and vulnerable. I imagine a garden, lush, green and sweet smelling blooming after this long drought.

Pain, you don't scare me.

One thing I realized over the 4th, spent at my cousin's home by the lake, is that facing a long term health issue is one of the scariest things I can imagine. Yet, here I am- one year after I first noticed something was wrong. I've faced more physical pain this year than in my whole life combined, with MDs telling me this issue may very well never go away. So, I realized, I don't have anything to be afraid of anymore. Pain? I've met it, slept with it, laughed through it and traveled in spite of it. So, when my cousins asked me to try out the water& jet skis- though my initial reaction was fear- I jumped on! I think this experience is teaching me, fear truly is the obstacle I must overcome.

Love, passion...
Can elude me in my scattered thoughts...
All run at me and non I can catch.

I'd like to be sheep-shearer.
Each idea, I'd capture, hold down
And gather its material,
Which accumulates.

I spin the wool to yarn, colorizing it,
At the appropriate time,
And organizing it thusly.

Then, with all my colors,
I weave a fabric.

No longer masses of wandering thoughts,
but a coherent product.

Useful & Beautiful.

Ready for a Change

The boys are asleep on either side of me, snoring softly. A half-eaten pita and empty beer bottle rest beside my thermometer, my companions for the weekend. I am exhausted, but the reasons behind it go far deeper than the early morning hour. Yet again, I have received some harsh news, and now I know that I only have one more straw to break before this camel might fall from the very weight of this holy ugly city. I hate to write so negatively, but it feels like the truth, and so, I'll write honestly.
The truth is, I do almost nothing here. I find myself uninspired by the exclusivity of Jewish and Muslim culture, by the fact that I don't understand not one, but two, languages my friends speak, and so I'm often left out of the loop. After so many months, I still can barely read Hebrew and my Arabic may have even gotten worse than when I left. My health seems to be precarious, at best, and I've spent the past week in bed with some variant of the flu. I have been fired from two, going on three, volunteering gigs here, have made about three friends, including my boyfriend, and have done almost nothing except work on disappearing for months. Moreover, I've spent thousands of dollars without working and without much to show for it, except for broken dreams and a sense of feeling even more so in the dark about what I want. All I know is, I want out.
The sad thing is, I felt almost exactly the same way in the states- as though I had no opportunity to really make a living for myself, to make a life for myself, and I felt I HAD to get out. Now, I'm out, and the feeling remains. Which tells me something: this feeling, it's within me. I haven't shined in so long that I think I forget what it feels like. What I know is that I've got to get ahold on my life again. I cannot let chance and fate and luck continue controlling me. Now, the question is how? How does one grab the reins when they've been dragging on the ground so long I don't even know they're still there? And I'm terrified I'm going to fall right off eventually... this ride can't last forever, and I don't want it to.

Jerusalem 3rd Day

How does one fight for justice and peace? Do I maintain neutrality? Do I pick up a picket sign from the Women in Black that reads "Stop Occupation" in Hebrew, Arabic and English? Do I listen to the personal stories of those who have been literally beaten by Israeli soldiers, forced out of their homes and prevented from accessing clean drinking water, jobs and even their capital, without flinching? And what am I to make of the story of my roommate, Nadine, a Jerusalem resident who chose to break up with her Bethlehem boyfriend rather than marry and find themselves unable to live together?

Their stories are true. The Israeli government demolishes Palestinian homes seemingly at random. I witnessed the rubble today. The Israeli government is not finishing the wall, the wall which is meant to create checkpoints of security, nor do Israeli soldiers use the checkpoints to identify threats. We've driven our tour bus into the West Bank without stopping numerous times in the past two days. In the words of our Jewish Israeli guide, "I'm a smuggler. All you need is to know a few words in Hebrew and have a yellow license on the back of your car." And still, and still, there are no suicide bombers. It is not the wall which is stopping them- they can walk around the checkpoints if they so choose- however, Palestinians are making the choice to endure the occupation without violence.

How much longer can they make this choice before violence erupts again? The infrastructure is falling apart in the West Bank. Schools are turning away students due to severe overcrowding, sewers are overflowing, garbage piles up in the streets, without sidewalks, signals or space enough for the cars. The civilians of Jabal Muqabr Mountain contribute to the total 30% of the East Jerusalem population, pay their share of taxes to the Israeli government and receive 7% of total municipality funding (12% according to Israeli studies). The drive into the settlement, ma'el adomeem, which takes approximately 30 seconds as you cross a checkpoint is incredibly refreshing. They have green grass, in place of desert rubble, palm trees in place of a barren landscape, and beautiful homes in place of crumbling apartments.

The winds blew over our tour group today from the bottom of the valley where the ring of settlements around Jerusalem appears to be closing. One building, a police department funded by a private Jewish family of Los Angeles, stood alone in a place the U.S. State Department had forbidden. It was fully equipped with far more electricity lines and roads than one building should ever need. The future of the site seems fixed before the building has begun.

First Day in Jerusalem

I am safe and sound, if not a little bit sleepy ;)! I saw all of Jerusalem yesterday... running... but I saw it. We visited the stations of the cross along with throngs of Christians from all over the world... little old men and women who had been waiting their whole lives to touch the spot Jesus did when he fell for the first time. Personally, I didn't get a whole lot out of it spirtitually, but I've NEVER seen the variety of people in one place, as yesterday.

The flight from London to TLV was a nightmare. A baby was screaming the ENTIRE flight and I was doubting all of my decisions- wresting with He that sharpens your skills and your nerves- all night. I had the row to myself, and the night was dark and endless. However, I prayed that I would meet a nice boy to take me to Jerusalem - and, at the end of the flight Ari- a 25 year old from Los Angeles with a yamaka who was exactly like Hunter S. Thomson from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, befriended me, offered to take me to Jerusalem and proceeded to explain his Zionist perspective from 4:30 to 7 a.m., when we arrived at the Sabeel convent by shuttle. As he had lived in Israel for some time, we argued over the actions of Israelis toward Palestinians, the wall, the killings, whether every Palestinian needs to die or not... as we watched the sun come up over what Israel has become in the past 40 years.

Bringing a Jew into the walls of a Palestinian convent was certainly a surprise for the nuns, however Ari and I had a blast exploring the grounds and sneaking ironic pictures of him standing on the cathedral steps. Getting directions from the nun, I then took him to our hostel, The Knight's Palace, which is actually a castle converted from the crusades in the heart of the old city.


As I approached, the Christians standing in front of the hostel started calling my name- Elizabeth! Elizabeth! When I introduced Ari to the Palestinian head of the hostel, Jamal, both eyed each other up and down- and I got A LOT of hard looks for bringing a Jewish boy with me. There is clearly so much I do not understand. However, they shook hands and said they wished they could be meeting under different circumstances, perhaps in a peaceful future. Afterward, Ari confessed to me that he could see that Palestinians were people too- "everyone is just a person"- and we both admitted that we had accomplished quite a bit before 9 a.m.

The food here has been amazing by the way- I'm eating breakfast as I frantically try to type this out. In the midst of our tour yesterday we were taken to a fantastic and glam restaurant, the hostel serves us breakfast and dinner in huge proportions- everything from eggs to tomatoes, pita and french toast, ham slices and olives.