Kate Hackett
I cannot believe that in the Year Of Our Lord 2022 women are still fighting for doctors to believe them and take medical diagnosis seriously, but here we are: another day another story about a woman struggling to get a diagnosis.
Breanne Rodgers is a 21-year-old from Huntsville, Alabama who recently went viral on TikTok as she posted a video of her experience being chronically misdiagnosed with a UTI.
Spoiler: she didn’t have a UTI.
Instead, she had interstitial cystitis, which is a “painful bladder syndrome.” Despite it being a common ailment, it’s frequently dismissed or misdiagnosed.
Breanne discusses her experience with what felt like “constant UTIs” in the TikTok. She says that she kept feeling ill despite “having no reason [she] could think of to have a UTI.”
Breanne tried cranberry juice and antibiotics but they did nothing — in fact, they made her feel worse.
Breanne isn’t alone in the misdiagnosis; according to the NIH, interstitial cystitis can affect between 3 and 8 million women and 1 and 4 million men in the US alone. Because there is not a lot of information on the illness — and, let’s be real, because it primarily affects women — it’s often misdiagnosed or outright missed.
BuzzFeed chatted with Breanne about the experience.
“I had been experiencing this incredible pain that disguised itself as a urinary tract infection. Every time I would tell my friends and mom about my symptoms, they would point out how often I was experiencing this and vocalize that they could not relate. I felt so alone and like something must be wrong with me,” she said.
She said she went to the doctor’s office many times and used an antibiotic for a UTI, but nothing helped.
“IC is more common than most people realize,” she said. “I know that I spent nearly every night wide awake in bed researching why my bladder was causing me this level of discomfort and/or pain nearly every other day. It truly is a lonely feeling not knowing what is wrong with you or anyone else battling the same issue.”
So what is interstitial cystitis? According to Dr. Von Bargen, a urogynecologist and medical adviser to a vaginal health brand, it is “a chronic condition that causes unpleasant sensations attributable to the bladder that have lasted more than six weeks without an identifiable cause.”
Fight for your health, ladies!
