Jacopo Fo English Blog

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MY CYSTITIS
(the diagnosis and the cure)

SYMPTONS ARE NOT THE MOST IMPORTANT THING. LOOK FOR THE CAUSES.

A bad doctor cures the symptoms of an illness. By doing so, he does not cure the illness, and so it becomes more serious, and after awhile it appears again in another part of the body, much worse.
A good doctor finds the causes of the illness and eliminates them. Only in this way does the patient truly heal.
This is the idea of medicine that Chinese doctors already had 2,500 years ago. And now the debate on this issue has beset the entire medical community.
The belief that curing the patient is equivalent to freeing him from his illness as fast as possible, attacking the symptoms of the desease with any and all effective means, is starting to waver. This procedure is valid in emergency situations when there is an imminent threat of death.
When the symptoms are killing the patient, they are to be eliminated at all costs.
But it is stupid to persist with the symptoms when the illness does not immediately threaten survival. In this case, one has to find the reasons why the patient is ill.
When I was 18 years old, I got a very annoying cystitis. I went to specialist who prescribed me antibiotics, but without any appreciable results: the pain persisted each time I urinated and ejaculated. I went to another doctor who suggested new tests and prescribed more specific and potent antibiotics.
No improvement.

I consulted a third specialist who advised anti-inflammatory injections, tonics and antibiotics.
Nothing.
A fourth added, along with antibiotics and anti-inflammatory drugs, a relaxing psychoactive drug and prostate massage: the latter consisted of the barbarous practice of sticking a finger into my rear and crushing the prostate, causing a hell of a lot of pain.
I was completely cured. But after seven days, the burning started again.
I visited a fifth luminary who crammed me full of pills. At the end of this cure, I urinated blood.
The sixth doctor advised me to give up sex. In the end, my father took me to one of the best urologists in the country, Professor Dell'Adami, who fortunately proved to be an entirely different plate of pasta.
He made me redo the tests. He verified that I had a bacterial infection, but it didn't worry him all that much. In his opinion, the infection was not the cause but the result of an imbalance in the entire genital tract.
When our body is functioning, it is perfectly capable of defeating a little infection on its own.
Therefore, he didn't deal with the bacteria with which I had lived for years now, in spite of the antibiotics.
He was the first to ask me if I studied a lot. I told him I worked. I was an artist, eight-ten hours a day seated at a drawing table. He told me that my problem particularly affected those who remain seated for a long time, such as truck drivers and medical students. The blood circulates poorly. Excessive heat is created and the valve that is responsible for the passing of urine and semen goes haywire. It was a disorder that he had discovered after years of research.
He prescribed walking, to remain seated for a long time in a tub full of hot water (immersed up to the pelvis) and to buy myself a horsehair pillow with a hole in the center (like a big donut).
I wasn't cured, but I began to improve slowly. However, it was too slow. So I went to see a spiritual healer, an elderly lady who would put ice on my penis, saying: "Don't worry, I could be your grandmother."

This gave me no results and so like many others afflicted by chronic illnesses that are resistant to any cure, I began a long pilgrimage. Travelling in China, I went to see an acupuncturist. Upon returning to Italy, I went to another... I went to five, but none of their cures had a decisive effect, although I did get temporary relief from them.
I started two homeopathic cures. They did me good, but I wasn't cured. I went to two magicians who removed the evil eye and prescribed prayers and amulets. I tried various herbal teas, compresses, garlic suppositories, enemas of oil and lavender, aromatic herb baths. I stopped eating meat, eggs, milk, cheese, sweets and chocolates. I tried macrobiotics. I experimented with Indian massage, Chinese self-massage, relaxation yoga, Tibetan medicine and Zen meditation. But after four years, I still, and often, had intense burning when urinating and reaching orgasm.
Of all the dozens of doctors who tried to cure me, none ever thought to ask me how I made love. My problem was in fact that I was a fantastic premature ejaculator: I would ejaculate at the speed of light.

And, unfortunately, the method I had discovered to prolong coitus was to contract my lower belly. This insane behaviour was aggravated by the fact that I had "the bad habit" of contracting that part of the body in moments of tension, while I drew or did something physically strenuous. I was an anxious type and this behaviour manifested itself in my way of making love. I was unable of letting myself go completely, not even during orgasm, as a result of the pain that accompanied ejaculation. A vicious circle was created. I started to realize all of this while making love with a marvellous young revolutionary feminist who told me "Calm down, honey!". She explained to me that we could make love with less anxiety and more in a spirit of fun. Soothed by her maternal tone, I was able in letting myself go, and, after some years, I experienced my first painless orgasms. This way I finally realized (I'm a little slow) that there was a direct relationship between my state of emotional and muscular tension and the burning. If I succeeded in relaxing and distracting myself, of letting myself go smoothly, without anxiety, the pain would not appear. But this was very difficult for me to do.

By then I was 23 years old, very demanding and a perfectionist, ill-humoured and easily angered; often I was incapable of being with others and I would retreat into my shell to brood in solitude over my existential rotten luck. In other words, a sourpuss. With occasional hysterical outbursts.

Shortly afterwards, about 24 years old, I realized I didn't want to live in the city any longer. I went to live in the country, and I found a kind of peace taking long walks in the woods. I felt better. I ate a lot of vegetables and whole-grain rice. Sometimes I felt the slight burning come back, particularly in periods of extra work and tension. I would heal myself by devouring raw artichokes and boiled onions and stretching out for hours to relax, breathing and moving my legs and pelvis in slow motion. Making love, I limited the frequency of actual intercourse, and devoted myself rather to more passive sexual practices in which it wasn't necessary for me to last long. The fact of knowing exactly where the clitoris is allowed me to do these things without having to leave my girlfriend unsatisfied.
The many kicks in the face I got from life gradually taught me to be less anxious and aggressive. A little detachment does a lot of good. No sense in getting upset over trifling matters. Often it's senseless getting mad even over important things.

If getting pissed off is useless, why do it? Things will go the way they have to go anyhow. In fact, getting upset just makes the situation worse.
If instead you are a little detached, you can reason better and your being calm will have a calming effect on others.

To realize this, however, took a long time. The final turning point came after a worsening of my symptoms. Twenty years had passed since the beginning of my illness and I could consider it almost cured. At that time, I began to hold public conferences and to sing in a crazy rock band.
Each time that I had to face an audience, I was struck by a swift attack of hemorrhoids and at the same time my cystitis would begin to howl again. After the show, as a result of fear and tension, I was in the most painful and shameful state, since nobody thinks twice about making fun of someone afflicted with this ailment. It didn't take me long to figure out that the two disorders were intimately connected. I found myself having to stay in bed for days and thinking of undergoing an operation.
Fortunately, after two years of this painful recurrence, I discovered that I loved making love for a long time, without worrying about my erection, making an effort instead to relax, breathing deeply, from the belly to the pubis to the anus. It was this technique of lovemaking in total psychological and muscular abandon that finally got rid of the hemorrhoids and what remained of the cystitis.

Actually, in spite of my countless attempts, I never succeeded in really relaxing the genital area. To do this without knowing how to proceed is really difficult. In the end I succeeded, partly with deep breathing (I will talk about this on page 99), partly by imaging that the area comprising the pubis, anus and bladder was like a balloon full of water.
It's kind of a dumb method, but it works: to listen how the force of gravity distorts this balloon inside oneself in different ways depending on the positions one takes, and to try to relax this balloon and to abandon it to the pressure of the earth's attraction. This way, I succeeded in finally reaching a state of total relaxation.
It was then that I noticed that I always peed too much in a hurry. I never completely emptied my bladder and this contributed to keeping the pubococcygeal muscle contracted. By learning to empty myself completely and practicing the balloon exercise, I started to live with relaxed pelvic muscles. This way, the genital area fully healed and I was finally able to have totally satisfying sex (only once in a while on stormy days when the fury of the elements falls on the sailing ship of my heart and fear claws at my chest do I feel a slight burning. But it is so slight that it is not a problem, if anything it is a first warning signal that lets me understand when I am demanding too much of myself).

I am telling you about my experience because it seemed the best way to make clear how necessary it is to confront certain disorders in a comprehensive manner, connected to a person's way of living and thinking.
It is useless to attack just the symptoms. Millions of people, who to no avail go through life trying to find to a cure for a chronic illness and are forced to live with pain and discomfort, can testify to this. To overcome a chronic illness means winning a great challenge, establishing a formidable premise for one's psychological development.
Almost all doctors persist in curing the superficial aspect of a disease (in my case, the infection), and are not in the least discouraged by the uselessness of the cure. Many alternative therapists also have the same attitude. They are sectarian: they don't see the patient as a whole. They don't look for the underlying causes of the imbalance which, in chronic illnesses, are always errors in emotional attitudes and living habits.
It is worth noting, however, that in fact there is a reason behind this accepted medical practice other than just the laziness and incompetence of doctors.
The problem is in the patients and their passivity towards the illness.

Often a therapist is seen as a miraculous healer and we tend to put ourselves passively in his hands. It is impossible to cure a patient who doesn't become the subject of the cure, who doesn't take it upon himself to understand the nature of his illness and the errors in his attitude and behaviour that make him ill. Recovery requires a change in the way of thinking.

One must ask the doctor not to cure the patient, but to give him the means to cure himself. If they had taught me when I was 19 years old to make love "the soft way", without an erection, to relax, I probably would have correct my disorders much sooner. But only provided that I take an active role in the cure from the start.
To be cured of my cystitis in a month would have been impossible anyway, because it was. A sign of an imbalance that was not superficial, but that had accumulated over time and was caused by a way of being that was rooted in my personality. Overcoming these chronic illnesses involves therefore a revolution in one's lifestyle. Obviously, this poses a problem full of philosophical implications. It is impossible to cure a patient who doesn't understand how he should collaborate with his doctor and who is incapable of changing himself.
As the Chinese said a long time ago
"No cure can heal a stupid person."

This situation also explains why medicine has historically encountered a lot of difficulty confronting illnesses at their root causes. Doctors worked for a living and so they cured above all the rich and powerful, people who were often arrogant and presumptuous, who refuse the idea that they might be wrong and who want to be served without any effort on their part. After all, this is the attitude we all have to some degree.
So we should not just blame doctors if things turned out this way. One thing for sure, however, is that if you have a chronic illness and you really want to be cured, first of all you have to cure your perspective on doctors.

Jesus said: "Love thy neighbour as thyself". In other words, if you don't love yourself, how could you even think of loving another person?

Illness isn't a foreign element to be conquered. It is a phenomenon that needs to be understood, an opportunity to discover what habits you have that alienate your natural self and wreak havoc on your being.
This way, curing yourself becomes a passionate investigation into the search of the self. You become the object of your attention, the world to discover, the most important thing. We have been taught not to be selfish or egotistical, but this is a lesson that leads to error.

If you are not curious to know yourself, to discover what makes you feel better, how can you have the sensitivity to understand others, to love them, to help them, and to laugh and play with them?
To know that I am the most important thing in the world and that my mission is to live with joy and cheer is the second step towards recovery.
Next one needs to learn to identify one's primary essential needs and to defend them with dignity. Too many people are afflicted with incurable illnesses only because they don't have the strength or the confidence to abandon unlivable situations.

To return to a previous example: how many intelligent women stay with men who beat them only because they are prisoners of a system of moral values that denies them the right to happiness for the "sake of the children," "to avoid scandal" or simply because they can't "accept failure." This last reason in particular is as curious as it is widespread. One does not sacrifice oneself for others but for oneself, except that the objective is not our happiness or our well being, but our sense of honour, our self-esteem. It's about egoism turned not towards our real person, in flesh and blood, but towards an image of ourselves that we have become fond of.
One's identity, personality, self-esteem... Call it what you will, it is the biggest bunch of megagalactic bullshit that was ever invented. It chews up more victims than any nasty viral epidemic that gets its kicks by tearing our lymph nodes to shreds. But listen, we all make this gross mistake in our thinking and it will take time to eliminate it.
To find your true nature means first of all to understand what you really do for yourself (what makes you laugh and gives you physical pleasure, serenity and satisfaction) and what you do instead to honour the mental fetish of your personality, the uniquely psychological satisfaction of answering to a preconceived image of yourself.
We need to learn to ask ourselves, "but why do I want to do this?"
What's the point?

The litmus paper test for understanding if you want to do something only because it is a fetish lies in the fact that real desires are directed towards an immediate satisfaction of a need. I do this because I like to and I will also like what I get out of it. Mental pleasures instead force you to do something you hate. You persist only because you're convinced that in this way you will get what you want. And when you do get it, you realize that before long you already want something else.
You never stop to enjoy what you have and you shovel shit in order to find diamonds.
And then, remember that false desires and mental hang-ups don't make you laugh. Real, flesh and blood desires are funny instead. This is the beginning.
In the following pages, we will illustrate an unusual way to consider the cure. I will suggest some exercises that can allow you to discover the potential of your unconscious mind and how to use it in order to develop your natural personality and your ability to cure yourself.

In the last part, you will find some advice on how to deal with, case by case, the more common illnesses. In fact, having had the good fortune of getting sick often, I can give you first-hand advice on the majority of disorders listed in the medical encyclopedia.

(Continue)

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