37M. I woke up one morning and it hurt to urinate. I had never felt anything like it before, and I assumed it had to be a UTI. I had a teledoc appointment and they prescribed antibiotics and told me to get in to see my primary care doctor. I started taking the antibiotics and went to see my primary care doctor. They did a bunch of lab work to check for a UTI or some other type of infection. Everything came back normal.

My primary care doctor told me to see a urologist. It took a couple weeks to get in to see one. At this point the pain was getting worse, and it hurt all the time, not just when I urinated. I also had to pee like every 20 minutes. I was completely miserable.

The urologist was worse than useless. He did a uroflow test and another blood panel that came back normal. He put me on flomax and told me to come back in a month. During that time, the pain only got worse. The flomax helped only slightly with the urgency and frequency.

I knew I couldn't wait a month, so I made an appointment with a different urologist. He ran me through the same tests as the first one. Neither of them knew what it could be. Since all my test results were normal, they were leaning towards Interstitial Cystitis, but told me that was a last resort diagnosis. They wanted to keep me on flomax.

After about 3 months of excruciating pain, all these doctors visits and a trip to the ER, I discovered pelvic floor physical therapy during a random google search. I scheduled an appointment and started doing some of the stretches I found online while I waited. The stretches didn't help a ton, but they provided minor relief for the first time in months, and gave me hope that my issue had something to do with my muscles.

I ended up going through a few different pelvic floor therapists and trying a bunch of stuff. They found that my pelvic floor, abdomen and back muscles were extremely tight. One therapist told me that I had the tightest abs she had ever felt.

Here's a summary of what's worked best for me:
- Cupping my abdomen
- Scraping my abdomen. I had a bunch of scar tissue that was causing restrictions in my abs and around my bladder.
- Foam rolling my abdomen
- Massage ball on trigger points, including my quads, hamstrings, glutes and abs
- Belly breathing - this actually didn't work well at the beginning because I couldn't even breathe into my abs at all. My core was so tight it was constricting my breathing. It wasn't until this was treated and relaxed a bit that I could even force air down into my belly.
- Hip release/psoas release tool - This didn't have a direct impact on my symptoms, but it helped me to gain mobility in my hips, which helped with flexibility and decreasing tension elsewhere.

It was frustrating because sometimes I'd work a muscle and it would provide relief, and another time I'd work the same muscle and it wouldn't. It felt like a game of tug of war between my muscles, where I'd work on one and another would tighten back up.

My progression definitely hasn't been linear. I still have days where I feel pain, but it's 100x better than it was when this all started, and I can manage the pain now. I know that stress makes it worse for me, as do bowel issues, so I try and manage those factors as best I can. I'd say it took a couple months of therapy to get me to feeling 50% back to normal, and after about 9 months I was at 90%. The last 10% has been the hardest.