With extensive hidden health conditions, Jessica Price tells Chloe Rowe of her hardships with pain, working and daily life and why ignoring your body is not the answer.
It's not always possible to see pain. If it is invisible, it can be ignored. This is something Jessica Price has learned. After jumping from job to job, as sales assistant, to eye technician, to administration, Jessica knows that her bladder problems, though unnoticed by everyone around her, is something that disrupts every aspect of her life.
22-year-old Jessica lives in the West Midlands. She suffers from a condition she has had since birth and has obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) and anxiety. She is unable to work and live as others do. It is an unrelenting agony.
“It is so painful,” she says, “I wouldn’t wish it on anybody.”
Jessica’s condition is called ureterocele. It is constant in her life, but unnoticeable to the people around her.
This hidden condition is a birth defect that affects women more than men. It forms when the end of ureters that enters the bladder don’t develop properly which then means that the ureteral end swells like a balloon within the bladder causing issues with the storage and flow of urine.
Jessica was diagnosed in May 2022. “I had an ultrasound of my bladder and my kidneys, and they found that my bladder doesn’t empty properly and that I have ureterocele, which is why I get water infections all the time,” she says.
Water infections are not the only problem Jessica endures. Whilst going through tests for her bladder issues, doctors discovered a cyst in her bladder, possibly caused by frequent water infections resulting from the ureterocele.
“The only reason that I got it checked out is because I have bladder inconsistency, so I just leak throughout the day, all day. I’m 22 and I’ve got the bladder of an old person,” Jessica says.
The symptoms of ureterocele include back pain, water or urinary tract infections, fever, painful or excessive urination and foul-smelling or blood in the urine.
The water infections and pain come so frequently for Jessica that it has become part of her daily life, “When I have water infections they clear up on their own, I don’t have to have antibiotics. My body is used to them,” she says.
But at the most unexpected times, the pain overcomes everything, and Jessica is left doubled over and unable to walk. “It feels like somebody is squeezing my bladder so tightly, it feels very crampy and sharp. It’s horrible,” she says.
Though the pain comes and goes, this hidden condition has brought along some more drastic and unexpected hardships.
The longstanding impact that ureterocele has had on her life has been huge. Jessica’s mental health has gradually gotten worse since the bladder inconsistencies started interrupting her daily life. Since she was eight years old Jessica has known she has OCD and in recent months has been diagnosed with anxiety.
“It’s effected my mental health,” she says. “It’s made my anxiety worse which in turn has made my OCD worse. My OCD makes me do things four times. It’s got a lot worse.”
With the physical pain and mental health suffering, every part of Jessica’s life has been affected. Even going to work has become difficult. Jessica does not currently have a job and the last jobs Jessica had become difficult because of her frequent trips to the toilet.
But in the end, it was her anxiety that meant she couldn’t continue working any longer.
“I had another job in business administration and I didn’t keep that job for long either,” she says, “It’s really hard to hold down a job, probably more from the anxiety of it which my condition caused.”
Jessica has been suffering from ureterocele for her whole life, experiencing long and frequent water infections as a child. But after spending copious amounts of time talking to doctors and going to the hospital, Jessica feels like she is taking up too much of their time. She feels that because her pain has been around so long, she shouldn’t complain about it anymore.
“Because I’m not feeling too poorly from it, I feel like I shouldn’t waste the doctors time which is a really bad mindset to have because if you’ve got reoccurring water infections it can cause your bladder to become really inflamed and damaged,” she says.
Ignoring, or thinking your health concerns are not worthy of attention can make any condition worse. It’s what made Jessica’s condition worse.
Though she is getting help for her physical and mental health and is awaiting appointments with doctors, Jessica is still worried for her future. Ureterocele cannot be removed or fixed easily, it is usually only treated.
“If you’ve got a cyst in your bladder in this condition it can make it much more likely that you’ll get bladder cancer, and now I’ve got that in the back of my mind. ‘What if that happens to me?’,” she says, “I’m worried my bladder is going to be really damaged when the doctors look at it.”
Jessica will be having an endoscope to assess her bladder, the cyst and the ureterocele and she hopes things can be dealt with without the need for surgery. But even if her physical problems are fixable, her mental health is still scarred.
“I think once this is sorted out maybe my anxiety will lessen a bit. But I think the damage is already done now, I’ve got too much generalised anxiety about so many different things that I don’t think that’s ever going to go away,” Jessica says.
Physical health is important and leaving any concerns unchecked can make you worse off in the future and have long-lasting effects on your mental health. The physical pain can be treated in time for Jessica, but her OCD and anxiety will need lots attention so she can feel in control of her life again.
Everyone’s pain is worthy of attention, even if it is seemingly invisible.
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