a thread for the ladies: how much do UTIs suck?!

wahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

UTI prophylactics for the win.

Sorry to be unladylike on a lady thread.

never had one. sorry bell, i hear they're awful. while women are probably more prone, i can't imagine how guys would be immune to them.

UTIs are often caused by e coli bacteria (think colon) finding their way into the urinary tract. This often coincides w/sex, for reasons upon which nobody dares speculate.

they are basically caused by having a vagina and having sex, as far as i can tell. so i dont know how the male version happens

well that's the last time i fuck a pile of shit

I hate to spoil the surprise here, but the male version most likely arises from anal sex.

There's a one-time pill you can take right after sex that basically will render you UTI-free forever as long as you remember to take it.

lt's stop making this sound like something dirty. some people are just more prone than others. and my colon is definitely not getting any play. seriously i get them so frequently that i have to take an antibiotic every time i have sex.

My wife is exactly the same, and we never have anal. Nitrofurantoin+++.

xp That would really, really suck.

I have been lucky in this regard, and have never had a UTI. A nurse freaked me out into thinking I might have one once when I was pregnant, but as it turned out, she was not usually an ob nurse, and the doctor assured her that for pregnant women, it is almost impossible to get a "clean catch" specimen. (Still, before that moment, she acted like I was lying about not having any symptoms. I kind of didn't like that nurse.)

if you do no get them, thank whatever deity you worship. it is so lousy. it's definitely one of those things that some people get and others never do. i am pretty lucky that i have never had a yeast infection. but that is small comfort at the time being (at least i have chocolate mint soydream though!)

and yeah i forgot to take the nitrofurantoin when i should have but just took 3 to hopefully make thing go away.

OK let's just make it clear that you don't even have to be in a relationship (never mind doing anal) to suffer one of these fuckers. Let's not cast aspersions on others' hygiene maybe (that's to libcrepe).

Antibiotics are a part of the problem and I try to avoid taking them unless doctor says it's imperative. Last winter before Xmas I had bronchitis and it was bad enough for my doc to insist I take a course of penicillin. I warned her that it would set me up for a UTI or similar. Up to that point I hadn't taken any antibiotic for 15 years, so although it killed the bronchitis stone dead I woke up a few days later going OH FUCK WAI DO I BURNNNNN :\ and grudgingly accepted a new script of other antibiotics.

Preventative steps: unsweetened cranberry juice is a good way to keep UTIs at bay; I think there are also tablets of same at health food stores. And antibiotics themselves ought to be chased with lots of water and live yoghurt to repopulate the stomach with the good bacteria killed by the antibiotics by accident along with the bad.

yeah that's very true. i hate how many antibiotics i have to take for these thngs, but the last time i tried to treat on with cranberry pills i ended up in the ER with a kidney infection. but still it's ridiculous. they usually prescribe cipro, which everyone knows as the anthrax cure, and it still gets terrified looks from pharmacists (they fill it right away though). probably not good for me at all, possibly breeding all kinds of super-resistant bacteria. i wish i could avoid it.

OK let's just make it clear that you don't even have to be in a relationship (never mind doing anal) to suffer one of these fuckers.

wait does this imply that you have to be in a relationship to have sex?

Teh, haha! My implication is that you don't have to be having sex with anyone at the time you get a UTI (I wasn't). I have to be really careful with kidneys so I'm glad I don't have a predisposition to UTIs. Not to be an armchair MD or anything BUT you have to take the cranberry pills before a night on booze and you should probably take a break from alcohol/caffeine for a month and seriously consider avoiding beer thereafter (I don't ever drink beer because I hate it but that might be some kind of biological imperative on the part of my body, dunno). Water, lots of it all day, also helps.

Over here docs are like 'take this for two weeks only' with antis; I hope US docs do not prescribe neverending antis for an individual because it doesn't sound like you can take it (who could? ARGH American docs).

(i didn't think you meant it that way it just read funny)

i think most docs here recommend that you take a full course of antibiotics but I've never heard of a regular regimen

ohman
yeah this isn't abt hygeine or etc but abt urethra set-up and bodily reactions to bacteria
UTIs blow. i have sent boyfriends to the corner store for cranberry juice after waking up at 6am in pain. so yeah fuck these things x5mil.
to be fully TMI, it's kinda an inherited bio thing and b/c my mom & i talk abt things like this, i have wisdom of ages at hand and those wisdoms tell me: bathe/shower before doin' it, both of yous, + drink a lot of water. to which i'm like aaaagh. but it's truth. gah. resigned. maybe. but i also think it has to do with bio-compatible bodies. but maybe that is b/c i read too many books, i do not know.

one thing i do know is that the only time i have had morphine was a direct result of a uti gone bad (went swimming in the pacific on top of it) and i mean i don't want to be in that pain again but MORPHINE wow it was like going back in time and wanting to stay there

i mean to some kind of time out of time

and that stuff they have in the uk that you can buy in drugstores to solve utis is pos just superconcentrated cranberry juice, i don't know, but regardless, the thing that (esp non-sugar) cranberry juice does is that it creates an uninhabitable zone for bacteria to cling to and so they just slide away, screaming nooooo. i think that this image is important to destroying them and getting better.

srsly tho, morphine
if yr in the hospital for whatever reason and they're like "what's the pain on a scale of 1-10" just say "ohman i don't know, 8?" and you will be set. then when they come back say "i was wrong, 10! 10!"

it's the only drug i have every thought of wistfully

I'm a nurse and when patients come claiming a pain scale of 10, we think they're drug-seekers. An 8 is much more believable.

that's why you say 8 first!

also b/c srsly wtf is a 10? gunshot to the stomach? visible tibia fracture? all the insanely gruesome images that sprung to mind when asked the pain-scale question it he first place?

waht
sorry
uh

:D

pee after you fuck

very OTM

^^^ yes. also, i don't know if this is correct, but i was under the impression that UTIs can be caused by too much air entering yr vag during sex - i.e. if the guy is pulling all the way out to frequently while you are in the throes of passion. i've only ever had a couple of minor ones, but my best friend is like bell and gets them pretty much every tiime she has sex.

Knew this would be a Tuomas thread.

ugh i just woke up and vomited. i don't know if this means it is more serious and has moved to my kidneys, or my stomach just didn't like the 3 antibiotics and 4 uristat i put it in last night (that stuff helps but it can really fuck with me).

either way i can't see my GP til tuesday! sstupid holiday weekend

i had one of these for the first time since college. i dranka s hitload of water and loaded up on vitamin c and cranberry pills but i had to take some leftover amoxicillan to kill it. now I have pink eye in both eyes, which i haven't had since i was a kid. i have had it for 3 days now and am thinking maybe i should go to the doctor. but it doesn't itch or hurt i just look like i have the RAGE. the internet is telling me to put breastmilk in my eyes.

bell if it is that bad and you have health insurance you should go to the emergency room or maybe a walk in clinic. the phillips family health practice in union sq takes walk ins i think since i may be heading there soon.

UTIs can be caused by too much air entering yr vag during sex

Nope. There's gotta be bacteria. Air entering yr vag can cause very scary pulmonary embolisms during pregnancy and postpartum!

bell labs, if uristat makes you puke, try taking 2 or 3 ibuprofen with food instead.

I used to get UTIs just by thinking about them. I ended up on low dose macrobid therapy for 6 months, had a cystoscopy and my urethra dilated, and now I pee like a champ! I heart my urologist!

urethra dilation sounds not fun

also, hugs bell_labs! :(

The dilation was more uncomfortable than painful (about a 3 on the pain scale!), but it was over very quickly and done wonders for my ability to pee. Now I only get UTIs about once a year.

it's feeling a little better this morning...thanks everyone. <3

Yay! Hopefully you will continute to get better. Infections moving up to the kidneys are no joke and I don't think you would want to "wait until Tuesday" to see someone about that possibility if you thought that was going on.

I had a Uti on a flight to Vietnam once, then I threw up on five people and dwarfed its significance.

i keep this stuff around: http://www.cystex.com/Pages/CystexHome_v2 and take cranberry pills like mad when i'm feeling any chance of getting one. they're hell.

not sure if the cystex is the same as uristat--when i feel the beginnings of a uti coming on sometimes cystex and cranberry can get rid of it. cystex has mild antibiotics so i have to be careful about taking it unless totally necessary. but it's gentler than rx stuff.

with antibiotics, i would get miserable yeast infections without fail until i found high-dose probiotics. probiotic yogurt never worked, regular probiotic pills never worked. high dose stuff isn't so common--you can get it from a naturopath or there's a brand i found that you can get for a bit less money, with the same stuff (still expensive, of course). i'll find the packaging later, it's a ugly hippie-looking label with a sunshine on it.

i take oregano oil a few times a week for preventing-plumbing-probs as well, and it works really well for me.

hope you feel better, bell labs!

i think it's always good to remind women that antibiotics affect the efficacy of birth control...

Sometimes chronic UTI's with the same partner can mean a passing of bacteria (something that might be non-syptomatic for the male partner), on a regular basis that sort of discludes antibiotics having any effect for the female partner.

You really have to do the course of pills, and let your lovely lady parts heal before having intercourse. Sorry, ladies! vaginas are ponds - breeding places. (I can't wait til Dan sees that sentence.)

I think showering before and after could be effective - but recurrent UTI's show either that the body has not gotten rid of the infection (and sex is causing it to recurr), or a continued susceptability, which would mean that the infection is still there, and just needs a little push to come back in the urinary tract.
I have talked to people who have had success with juliaA's reccomendations.
Patience?

the rhetoric of that cystex site makes me want to punch things

rrobyn- I assume you mean "must see a doctor to confirm that you have been in agony!" rhetoric.
Fuck that. The clinic I work for prescribes -and if you happen to think you have it more or again, here ya go. We trust women to know what their symptoms mean. (But, ya know, a urine test and a swab never hurt.)

testing partners never hurts, either. men are so often asyptomatic for things that get funky for women. That they are carrying.

Also - pregnancy!

I've found - and this might sound odd - that I *feel* UTIish when I've drunk a lot, sometimes. Like I am mega-acidic, but I dont show an infection? It really bugs me!

the rhetoric of that cystex site makes me want to punch things

i should have posted a pic of the product rather than the site, which looked really fucking annoying at a glance. the product is great!

trayce, i feel uti-ish at certain points in my cycle. it really bugs me to use the bathroom so much and have some discomfort that feels like it might just be the beginnings of something when it's probably not, but you can never be quite sure til the agony part. arrrgh.

aimchurie - what is the treatment for men? the same course of antibiotics?