Like many women, I suffer from cystitis time to time, and I know how unbearably painful and disruptive it is.
Worse, it always seems to start in the early hours of Sunday morning. Which means hours of agony until a pharmacy opens. Not that that really matters. I have yet to find anything in a pharmacy that is any use at all. Does cranberry juice actually work for anyone?
But there is a treatment that works for me, every time. It’s not pretty, but it is effective, you can do it in the comfort of your own home, and it goes like this.
You will need:
- a bowel big enough to fit your bum into
- lots of salt
- comfortably warm water
Half fill the bowl with the warm water. Dissolve the salt into it. I’ve never actually measured how much salt to use. Quite a lot seems to be the right amount. Call it a few handfuls - or more. Now for the undignified bit. Plonk your bum into the bowl and—best as you can—relax. Swish the water round the painful bits (you know where they are) and stay there until the pain goes away. For me this takes somewhere between ten minutes and half an hour. Voila! Now you can rinse yourself off, go back to bed and sleep.
I’d like to be able to claim medical authority for my cure. That I found it in some forgotten medical textbook, or a retired doctor told me. But I’m pretty sure it came from either my mother or grandmother.
One caveat. If you’re getting cystitis frequently, don’t make my mistake. GO TO YOUR DOCTOR.
At the end of last year I was very run down, and was getting cystitis about once a month—much more often than my ‘normal’ pattern of once a year. Each time, I treated it successfully at home. However, after three months, I developed a fairly serious kidney infection—a situation which could have been avoided if I’d gone to the doctor when it was still only cystitis.
