A lot of IC patients have either considered trying instillations or have tried it once and felt it didn't help so they gave up.
If you’ve been trying Instillations and feel you are not having success, I would urge you to work with your doctor about trying different cocktails. For example, if you’ve been using the same cocktail for a 6 months or even many years and it’s not working, then it’s time to move on! First, there are SO many different cocktail combinations that can be tried you should ask your doctor about trying a different one. It took me about 4-5 different cocktails before we hit the right one that works for me. If your doctor is not open to trying a different cocktail, then you need a new doctor!
The instillation cocktail my doctor uses is a basic one of Heparin, Lidocaine and Sterile Saline. Many doctors use Sodium Bicarb and when I asked my doctor why he didn’t use that, he told me he wasn’t seeing enough successful results with that in the cocktail. He replaced it with Sterile Saline and, in his practice, he saw much better results.
The instillation cocktail my doctor uses is a basic one of Heparin, Lidocaine and Sterile Saline. Many doctors use Sodium Bicarb and when I asked my doctor why he didn’t use that, he told me he wasn’t seeing enough successful results with that in the cocktail. He replaced it with Sterile Saline and, in his practice, he saw much better results.
So if your cocktail has Sodium Bicarb, but you feel it’s painful or not helping, talk to your doctor about replacing it with the Sterile Saline and see if that works.
In addition, some patient’s cocktail includes Kenalog. I could not tolerate Kenalog, but some patients love it. So the point is to be willing to try different cocktails if one doesn’t work, another might. That’s how we found what worked for me.
Bottom line, an instillation should NOT be painful. So if it is, then don’t keep doing them. The point is to relieve your pain not make it worse. But I would, again, urge you to try a different one to see if you can find one that does work.
If you explore several different cocktails and none of them work, you may need a referral to a Qualified Pain Management doctor.
I’ll post a link to the ICA website on the different instillation cocktails that you could consider. Read it! Print out things you want to discuss with your doctor. If he’s not interested talking about other treatments, again, you should look for a new doctor! There are treatments out there that can help and don’t give up until you find better help!
In addition, I below are links to two videos I did a few years ago that talk about catheters and catheterizing (either in the doctor’s office or at home). I think there’s some important and helpful information in the video, so you might want to watch that as well.
Video - Catheters 101
Video - Magic Catheters
Very helpful information. Learned a lot. Thank you for making this video.
ReplyDelete