What interstitial cystitis can involve
Interstitial cystitis, also called bladder pain syndrome, produces the symptoms of a urine infection without the infection. Pain that builds as the bladder fills, urgency, needing to go constantly, and waking through the night. Because the tests come back clear, many people are treated for infections repeatedly before anyone uses the right name.
It shapes a day quietly and completely: how far you'll travel, how long a meeting can be, whether you drink anything before leaving the house. Recording frequency and night waking as they happen gives a urologist or GP something firmer than an estimate, and gives you something to point at when tests keep coming back normal.
Symptoms checklist
Interstitial cystitis symptoms checklist to take to your GP
Below are some of the symptoms associated with Interstitial cystitis. You can print the Interstitial cystitis checklist and weekly diary and fill it in by hand.
See what applies to you, note how often it happens, and take it to your appointment, so the conversation starts further along. It describes your experience. It does not say what is causing anything: having many of these does not mean you have Interstitial cystitis, and having few does not mean you do not. Only a clinician can work that out with you.
- Bladder pain
- Urgency
- Needing to go often
- Pain as the bladder fills
- Waking at night to go
- Pelvic pain
- Fatigue
- Something else I want to mention
Print the Interstitial cystitis checklist and weekly diary Download as PDF
The list comes from the NHS and charity sources linked further down this page, and from what people living with interstitial cystitis tell us they keep an eye on. It is a starting point, not a test.
How a day can feel
If your days sound anything like this, taluvu was made with you in mind.
- “It feels like an infection that never goes away.”
- “I know where every toilet is, everywhere I go.”
- “They treated me for cystitis over and over.”
- “Nights are broken and the days pay for it.”
- “I stopped drinking before going out, which is its own problem.”
These are the kinds of things taluvu invites you to say in your own words, never a checklist of what anyone “should” have.
