The Hail Mary That Let Me Sleep

By February of 2021, I was finally able to get in to see my urologist.

It had been months of waiting.

Months of pain.

Months of sleepless nights and unanswered questions.

When I sat in his office, I laid everything out.

The burning.
The constant urgency.
Getting up over and over again at night to pee.
The pattern of flares.
The way certain activities made everything worse.

This wasn’t occasional discomfort.

This was my life.

He listened.

Then he prescribed amitriptyline to help calm the bladder nerves and reduce pain. He also brought up the possibility of performing a hydrodistention.

Before he could even fully explain the procedure, I was already nodding.

I was on board.

I was ready.

He looked at me and said, almost half-smiling, “So you want to go Hail Mary on this?”

And honestly?

Yes.

I did.

At that point, I wasn’t afraid of procedures.

I was afraid of living like that forever.

I wasn’t chasing a miracle.

I was chasing relief.

And I was willing to try.

I filled that prescription as soon as I left his office.

There was no hesitation.

By that night, I had taken my first dose.

And for the first time in over a year, I slept.

Not in broken fragments.

Not in twenty-minute intervals between bathroom trips.

Real sleep.

The kind where you wake up and feel like your body actually rested.

The medication was a game changer.

The burning softened.
The urgency calmed.
The nights became manageable.

With medication on board and my hydrodistention scheduled for later that month, I finally felt like things were turning a corner.

For the first time in a long time, I felt hopeful.

Not healed.

But hopeful.

And after living in constant pain, hope felt like everything.

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