not cancer!

Of course this is great news.  I spent the last 2 weeks trying not to spin myself up into a frantic mess over this and did a pretty good job.  It helped that yesterday the kids and I went to an early matinee of Star Trek Beyond and then out for a nice lunch at Nico Heirloom Kitchen, the new restaurant in Gilbert's downtown area.  But I was still pretty nervous about this one.

The diagnosis itself surprised me, because I don't think it ever came up in any of the symptom checkers: interstitial cystitis.  I had always thought symptoms associated with IC were like those of a urinary tract infection, and that's not what's going on with me at all.   The doctor said this is usually a diagnosis of exclusion, what you get stuck with when all the tests come back negative and you're still in pain.  However, in my case, my bladder actually demonstrated the hallmark "weepy" behavior when she hyper-inflated it while I was under anesthesia, so this is not one of those "we don't know what else to say, so we'll say this," situations.

Treatment, for now, is physical therapy, just once a week for six weeks to try and strengthen my pelvic floor muscles (which are operating well from my perspective, but once again, I don't know what I don't know here.)  I've had great results with physical therapy in the past, so I'm hopeful.