Chronic Bladder DisorderThere are few telltale signs of what Shelly Gregory faces on a daily basis. Upon closer inspection, one can notice the strange way she holds the right side of her abdomen when she walks or the way she tilts her body to the side when she sits in a chair for too long. To the people around her, Gregory, a 35 year old man. -year-old, mother of two daughters, can be considered in good health. But only those close to her, including her husband and children, truly understand the pain she must endure. “When I'm having a really bad day, I feel like there's glass in my bladder and it's bleeding and there's nothing I can do. can do to stop it,” Gregory said. “It hurts so much it feels like my heart is going to explode.” Gregory is one of more than 700,000 people in the United States – 90% of them women – who struggle with interstitial cystitis, a chronic condition characterized by inflammation. bladder which causes urinary frequency and urgency as well as pelvic pain. There has been relatively little progress in this area since the first written reference to interstitial cystitis in 1836. More than a century later, there are still few clear answers to what interstitial cystitis means. causes this multifaceted disease or how to treat it effectively. According to epidemiological studies conducted in 1997, the disease typically affects white, educated women in their early to mid-40s. The spectrum of severity of symptoms can, however, vary from one person to another. Some people feel the need to urinate (up to 70 times a day), while others experience bladder pressure or, in severe cases, unrelenting bladder pain. Some patients with interstitial cystitis may notice signs of the disease: mucosal hemorrhages or Hunner's ulcers that bleed when the bladder is filled beyond its capacity. People with IC have a small bladder capacity that holds less than 300 ml, or about 1 cup. Gregory said her bladder pain began in 1992 when she developed a blood clot after giving birth to her daughter. Five years later, she discovered the cause was interstitial cystitis, not the blood clot. Robert Moldwin, a national expert on interstitial cystitis and director of the Interstitial Cystitis Center at Long Island Jewish Medical Center in Hyde Park, New York, said that despite its prevalence, doctors often misdiagnose interstitial cystitis because patients can perceive pain in one or more areas of the body. basin.