Medicine has failed to find a cure for interstitial cystitis, a painful condition mostly affecting women. So women are finding their own cures. At the worst stage of her condition, Jessica Parks was using the bathroom 70 times a day, living in a pain she describes as “slow suicide.” At the peak of Sunny Morrow’s struggle, she “couldn’t stand upright” and was “peeing knives” every day. Brittany Auerbach too felt “crushed” and “debilitated.” All three women suffered from interstitial cystitis (IC), a highly painful bladder and pelvic condition that Auerbach describes as like having “a never-ending urinary tract infection (UTI).” Except that unlike with a UTI, there is no official cure, treatment or even a recognized cause for IC. Meghan Pauley, a nurse practitioner with Novant Health who specializes in urogynecology, says that “for the longest time in the medical community, there was a culture of disbelief about this syndrome,” even though “it’s real, it’s painful and it’s life-changing.” But when Parks, Morrow and Auerbach were told that the chronic pain they suffered would be their lifelong reality, they refused to accept it. They each discovered a combination of diet and lifestyle changes that cured them of their pain from a condition that, to the formal medical community, remains a mystery. They didn’t turn to alternative healers — the support and help they needed came from a community of fellow female patients that has emerged on social media, demonstrating that women, when failed by medicine, don’t fade away. They fight back. | 
