IC Awareness Month day 2: poetry.

Day 2: Submit a poetry or spoken word piece about something positive your IC struggle has done for you.

'It began last September: a year ago.

It was the end of a bad relationship and the end of a bad summer.

I bled from my backside and I was ill for two months solid.

I was in a little isolation room in a dirty west country hospital.

I thought I was going to die.

My brain, heart, body shrunk; when I opened my eyes all I could see was the grey

Tentacles of death, winding around me.

But I fought, and fought, and began to eat,

Began to emerge from the black.

And then one evening my bladder started screaming.

Not just a little whimper; a terrifying yell of surrender

And fury. I went to the doctor.

I went to another doctor.

My bladder stayed angry; furious in fact.

There was nothing much the doctors could do,

Except for look inside me, diagnose, tell me the facts.

But the reality is this:

My illness settled in my bladder.

It burns, pushes, complains, winges, niggles at me.

Some days I am ok; some days I am paralysed in pain.

And how has it changed me?

I'm quieter; I'm more grateful.

I'm more spiky; I'm less hateful.

I'm happy to do less and to aim lower if it means less pain.

I would give anything to get better.

I am campaigning for a drug that may make my hair fall out, because I want to get better.

So I have become desperate, and yet more calm.

There is irony in Interstitial Cystitis.

The people I did not really care about have faded away;

Those who love me and whom I love have become brighter.

Dear friends and companions whose kindness I appreciate every day.

My children have come to life in technicolour in my world.

I am blessed beyond belief to have them and even at the worst times

I thank this godforsaken illness for showing me how lucky I am.'

 

Here are some others:

http://icramblings.com/2013/09/03/interstitial-cystitis-in-its-most-poetic-form/