Product Description
Interstitial cystitis/painful bladder syndrome , is a urinary bladder disease of unknown cause characterised by pain associated with urination , urinary frequency , urgency, and pressure in the bladder and/or pelvis. Pain that worsened with a certain food or drink and/or worsened with bladder filling and/or improved with urination was reported by 97% of patients. Patients may also experience nocturia, pelvic floor dysfunction and tension , pain with sexual intercourse, and discomfort and difficulty driving, traveling or working. Research has claimed that the quality of life of some IC patients is equivalent to those with end stage renal failure. ... Read more

Product Description

Chronic Prostatitis is a common and debilitating condition affecting 5-12% of men worldwide. The most common form is category III, or Chronic Pelvic Pain Syndrome. Cutting-edge clinical research has led to advancements in the diagnosis and treatment of prostatitis, a group of conditions that is at once extremely common, poorly understood, inadequately treated and under-researched. In Chronic Prostatitis/Chronic Pelvic Pain Syndrome, the author provides today’s most current information covering the four categories of prostatitis (acute, chronic bacterial, CPPS and asymptomatic inflammation). A diverse international group of contributors that includes urologists (academic, primary care and front line private practice), scientists, psychologists, and pain specialists from the National Institutes of Health provide the reader with novel approaches to helping their patients. The chapters in this important new work cover general evaluation of the prostatitis patient, the approach to acute prostatitis, chronic bacterial prostatitis and chronic pelvic pain syndrome, evidence behind individual therapies and ancillary topics such as erectile dysfunction, infertility, the link between chronic prostatitis and prostate cancer, male interstitial cystitis and the potential etiologic role of calcifying nanoparticles. Chronic Prostatitis/Chronic Pelvic Pain Syndrome offers novel approaches to diagnosing this condition as well as providing ways in which to ease the suffering of the patient with prostatitis.

Product Description
Bladder Pain Syndrome: A Guide for Clinicians provides a comprehensive update in the pathophysiology, epidemiology, terminology, evaluation and treatment of patients with pelvic pain perceived to be related to the urinary bladder. The volume covers the tremendous evolution during the last decade in our understanding of pain syndromes and their diagnosis and treatment. It is now clear that Bladder Pain Syndrome belongs to the family of pain syndromes, and therefore treatment has moved from the treatment of the bladder to the treatment of a pain syndrome with the special problems this presents when the pain syndrome involves urinary symptoms. Interstitial Cystitis was poorly defined and the interpretation and patient selection differed enormously around the world in many ways making exchange of information unreliable and confusing. Bladder Pain Syndrome is clearly defined and the result is a much better patient selection. This volume provides state of the art background for making a correct evaluation and diagnosis of patients with pelvic pain and voiding problems resulting in a more focused treatment to the benefit of the patients. The volume also covers the close relationship between different pain syndromes including those outside the pelvis.Bladder Pain Syndrome: A Guide for Clinicians will be of great utility to urologists, gynecologists and all health professionals dealing with patients with pelvic pain. ... Read more

Product Description
This digital document is an article from Medical Update, published by Benjamin Franklin Literary & Medical Society, Inc. on February 1, 2005. The length of the article is 502 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Easing chronic bladder pain.
Author: Phillip Mosbaugh
Publication: Medical Update (Newsletter)
Date: February 1, 2005
Publisher: Benjamin Franklin Literary & Medical Society, Inc.
Volume: 30Issue: 8Page: 2(1)

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more

Product Description
This digital document is an article from Medical Update, published by Benjamin Franklin Literary & Medical Society, Inc. on April 1, 1992. The length of the article is 386 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: It's in the wall of your bladder - not your head.
Publication: Medical Update (Newsletter)
Date: April 1, 1992
Publisher: Benjamin Franklin Literary & Medical Society, Inc.
Volume: v15Issue: n10Page: p3(2)

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more

Product Description
This digital document is an article from NWHRC Health Center - Urinary Tract Conditions, published by Thomson Gale on March 17, 2005. The length of the article is 4849 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Urinary Tract Conditions; Diagnosis.
Publication: NWHRC Health Center - Urinary Tract Conditions (Pamphlet)
Date: March 17, 2005
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Page: NA

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more

Product Description
This digital document is an article from Gale Encyclopedia of Surgery, brought to you by Gale®, a part of Cengage Learning, a world leader in e-research and educational publishing for libraries, schools and businesses.The length of the article is 1471 words.The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase.You can view it with any web browser.Written by experts in the field, this encyclopedia covers surgical procedures and related topics, such as anesthetics, medications, and postoperative care. Entries include definition, purpose, demographic information, diagnosis/preparation, aftercare, risks, morbidity, and mortality rates, alternatives, and more. ... Read more

Product Description
In the late 1980s Marguerite Guzman Bouvard began experiencing the puzzling symptoms of an illness that affects millions of women yet often takes years to diagnose, interstitial cystitis: an inflammation and deterioration of the bladder lining. It is often accompanied by related immune disorders such as fibromyalgia and vulvodynia that cause crushing fatigue and a host of allergies, conditions Bouvard developed. As her illnesses progressed, Bouvard, an active globe trotting scholar and writer, was forced to slow down and to reassess her priorities. This memoir tells the story of how she came to create a life that was rich and full despite debilitating physical conditions.

Bouvard addresses key issues such as the importance of speaking clearly to the broader society about illness, learning to deal with pain, and how to manage relations with physicians. She reveals how she learned to continue to be of use to the world by opening up a new area of working toward human rights and reorienting her life as a writer. The book has a strong spiritual dimension in revealing how the meditation and reflection she turned to because of her curtailed activities actually opened her up to a wider life. From these practices she learned to cultivate inner strength, flexibility, and adaptability. Thankful for small pleasures and grateful for what she has, Bouvard shows how true healing means not waiting for a cure, but maintaining a sense of possibility. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

Very dissapointing
Like Ms. Bouvard, I too suffer from chronic illness.I found this book to be poorly written; many chapters contained brief paragraphs that lacked cohesion.The author's over-use if cliches was nauseating at times.And while there were a few insighful sections, average people do not have the luxury to holday in France or other exotic locations.I was hoping to find more depth in the book and I would not recommend it to a person suffering from chronic illness.I feel the book is better suited to caregivers or laypersons who wish to learn more about the challenges faced by people with chronic conditions.While I sympathize with the author's struggles (I suffered a temporary bout of interstitial cystitis while on chemotherapy), I often felt she used the book as a means to boast about her many accomplisments. As a nurse scholar myself, I felt these forays into her endless invitations to lecture or associate with the academic elite to be self-serving.The excessive inclusion of her literary successes were off-putting and not in keeping with what I'd hoped the book would be; insights into healing.Overall, a huge disappointment.

Transformative Healing
This book takes you on a journey into the process of healing through reflection, imagination, and heartfelt glimpses into this author's soul. As you read this book, you will find yourself entering into a sacred space within you and a peace filled place known as your soul. What the Dying Teach Us: Lessons on Living

A much-needed read
Chronic illness is something that affects millions of people worldwide. And yet those in pain often feel alone, as if no one "gets" what they're going through. By writing this book, author Marguerite Bouvard has validated all of those who struggle with chronic illness year in, year out. This book can also serve as a learning tool for the families and friends of those who suffer from chronic illness. I highly recommend HEALING.

This Book Can Change Your Life--Whether You're Healthy or Not
I can understand why it was many years before a woman as ambitious and accomplished as Marguerite Guzman Bouvard could stand before her colleagues and share with them her long-kept secret: "I am chronically ill." In her book Healing: A Life with Chronic Illness, Bouvard chronicles her own resistance to admitting her daunting physical limitations.

For decades, Bouvard had been absorbed in a busy and very public life of travel, research, teaching and writing--a life she loved, a life that gave her her sense of her successful self, and one she simply refused to surrender. She fought valiantly against the reality of her diminishing energies and capacities. She found her illness demeaning, an embarrassing weakness, a symbol of her failure both as a professional and as a person. As she became less active, less vocal, she felt her colleagues avoiding eye contact and avoiding her altogether. She began to feel invisible, "an unwanted outsider," no longer a part of the illustrious team of academicians that had been her life for so long. As her condition limited her more and more she lived "...in a turbulence of outrage, fear, and sorrow..." over her wildly changing circumstances.

When her illness at last became impossible to ignore, Bouvard spent years going from doctor to doctor, enduring painful procedures. Accurately diagnosed at last, she learned she had a chronic illness called interstitial cystitis, an inflammation and deterioration of the bladder lining that affects not just one area of the body but the body in its entirety. After a time, she would also develop fibromyalgia, again a miserable chronic illness involving muscle pain, severe fatigue and disturbed nightly sleep.

But in spite of her depleted stamina, Bouvard refused to cancel a previously planned arduous journey to Argentina to work with the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, whose children had disappeared and/or suffered torture at the hands of the country's brutally suppressive government. From these exceptional and courageous women, Bouvard learned that they assuaged their grief over the loss of their children and the brutal tyranny they lived with daily by banding together, by sharing their stories, by actively rising up against their oppressors, by not keeping silent. In time, she realized that she too would find healing only by speaking the truth of her increasing physical frailty, her acute and unrelenting pain.

The Mothers, who possessed a profound sense of caring for one another and a dedication to righting the senseless and horrific injustices that endangered them daily, became Bouvard's teachers. Her essential values began to change. Things she once considered important lost their significance. She stopped rushing about, stopped feeling the familiar competitive drives she had known all her life. She learned from them how to listen, how to hear and see in depth what was going on around her; she learned to pay attention, to give herself time to take things in and reflect.

However, these changes happened only gradually. She admits that it took her a long time to come to terms with her chronic illness. She writes:

I didn't realize this was the beginning of learning a new culture or that I would have to create a new language that would reflect my reality. Nor was I aware of one of the sources of my deep discomfort: that to become ill in this society means having the body, spirit, and mind severed. How could I speak to the people around me about my fear and anxiety, how could I speak to the self that was changing, when I was unable to find the words and had no frame of reference?

Having found the language to speak her truth, Ms. Bouvard was faced with giving up the certainties of her old career. She needed to learn to navigate her life without the familiar maps and landscapes of previous years. She began to trust that ideas would come in new ways, that her career would follow a different but equally creative path. She wanted to write only about ideas that fired her soul; she wanted to write not with the objectivity of research but as though she was addressing each reader personally.

She became excited as she felt herself and her life changing drastically. She began to keep a journal and as it became filled with her writings, and with cards and messages from friends, she realized she was neither invisible nor alone...no longer "an outsider" but very much a thriving human being, more connected to God and to herself than she had ever been. "Chronic illness," she writes, "has given me the opportunity to reassess my life, to decide on how I will live, what I hope to accomplish and what is important to me."

We all have problems that are difficult to confront, difficult to come to terms with. This is a book that can change the lives of the healthy as well as those struggling with illness. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

by Duffie Bart
for Story Circle Book Reviews
reviewing books by, for, and about women

very enlightening and helpful
Having received HEALING only this morning, I have only skimmed it and found it very insightful, enlightening and encouraging. I am a vicitim of IC myself and have been discouraged with most of the urologists and urogynecologists I have seen over the past 16 month. It wasencouraging to read what Marguerite Guzman Bouvard had to say on this very subject.I am ordering 5 books, one for each of my children, so they can get a better understanding of what IC is all about. ... Read more