stupid, stupid UTI

Ok. I can’t forbear writing about it anymore. It’s inescapable, and try as I might, I can’t avoid its pointed reality. The real reason I haven’t written is not so much that I’ve been exhausted or that I’ve been busy—though both are true—and less this: I have a urinary tract infection of simply epic proportions. It is consuming every iota of my waking attention, and I have been awake a lot.

If you’ve never had a UTI, you can’t imagine the simple and occasionally exquisite agony of being aware that you are, indeed, equipped with a bladder and a urethra. Aside from the quotidian experience of feeling that I need to pee, you know, normally, I enjoy living my life in a blissful ignorance that there’s anything surrounding said need to pee. I like forgetting that I have the whole kidney-ureter-bladder-urethra kit and caboodle. I like that area to remain anonymously functioning, free of attention, and vaguely pleasurable. I like my pee-area to be like a stoplight: necessary, sometimes mildly annoying, but on the whole completely unremarkable.

The UTI feels like there’s something small and sharp boring its way out of your nethers, and it is a feeling unmitigated except for when you actually pee, and then it flames out in a great internal conflagration. Plus, it’s gross. I could describe the fetid particulars of my urine’s current state in language so florid that you might not consume anything but organic cranberry juice for days, but I’ll censor myself and let your imagination give the wide brushstrokes for you. Suffice to say, this is not the pale, pretty posy-happy pee of usual. And I’ll leave it at that.

See the really insidious thing about the urinary tract infection is not so much the pain—though the pain is extra-special pyrotechnic painful. It’s not the lingering sensation that you desperately have to pee, and then when you go to pee, only about a dropper full of urine dribbles out, reluctantly. It’s not the general discomfort wherein you can’t sit, stand, lie, walk, fidget, lounge, lunge, laugh or loll without feeling like you’d like to take a large ice cream scoop and just pull out the whole bladder entourage, consequences be damned. It’s not the fact that you have to take Cipro to get rid of it, and that if you don’t, you run the risk of having the infection crawl up your urinary tract and, like Nazis into Poland, lay waste to your kidneys. No, the really insidious thing about urinary tract infections is the misguided belief that sometimes—sometimes—you can cure them yourself.

I am a big fan of sidestepping conventional medicine whenever possible. Peeled garlic, plain yogurt, St. John’s Wort, Vitamin C, colloidal silver: I’ve used them all and more to combat a range of illnesses wide as an acrobat’s knees. I have bought cranberry juice, extract, and capsules in bulk and consumed them like M&Ms for UTIs in specific. Sometimes it works; sometimes it doesn’t. It’s a crap shoot—or a pee shoot, really. And this time, it was to no avail. I am off in eight minutes to pick up my Cipro from CVS. Not that I’m counting the minutes.

And the thing is, I knew—knew with a titanium certainty—as I lay in bed with my long-distance lover this past weekend, lay drowsy and limp as a grimalkin in the sun, knew full well and knew with a consenting adult’s lifetime of experience that my choice not to pop up out of bed with the alacrity of a whack-a-mole could result in this pernicious UTI. I knew it then, and I ignored it. Somehow, nestled in that hotel room, blank and beige and inoffensive as Ellen DeGeneres, I thought that somehow, some way, this time the UTI wouldn’t materialize. I could have peed and staved off this hellish infection, and I didn't.

Somehow, as I laid sated and smiling with my long-distance lover, I thought the magic of a new lover, the ever-unfolding promise of that utopian space of a hotel room, the whole unfathomable unlikeliness of the entire erotic enchilada, would protect me like a talisman. That somehow, some way, the UTI would see me, smile, and happy for me, pass me by.

I was wrong. Stupid, stupid UTI.

Image comes from the New York Times health guide on urinary tract infections, an article that gently points out exactly the breadth and depth of my denial.

Comments

[Maven]

Oh man, I feel your pain--especially the part about sometimes curing it yourself. Without getting into a whole bunch of personal anecdote non-science, I *will* say that D-Mannose is pretty righteous. The websites selling it often look like quacky infomercials, but the evidence supporting its efficacy seems legit. I take a few every time that ominous feeling rears its unlovely head, and so far so good.

[Bobolink]

Have you ruled out a kidney stone? The symptoms you describe sound a lot like my experiences with kidney stones. I'm not a fan of self diagnosis.

[Wired]

Oh, oh, I know just what you mean. The hoping and the staving off with overhydration and cranberry, and eventually succumbing.

Two notes: My doctor says that she can prescribe prophylactic antibiotics so I can take one pill after a rampageous encounter. You know, before it gets bad.

If you are one of those people who gets a yeast infection when on antibiotics, those are also a bitch to home-treat. I have trained said doctor to just give me diflucan with any antibiotic scrip.

[chelsea g]

Dude. I went to the doctor's. Hence the prescription for Cipro. It's a UTI.

And, yeah, it's the fun fun fun probiotic fest for me right now as well. There's nothing like the UTI/yeastie combo pack to make girl think seriously about celibacy.

kissykiss,
chelsea g.

[J.J. Adler]

Oh, bleah. Ain't that just the perfect thing to put a cap on a great escapade? And just think of all that terrific positive reinforcement, too: "wow, that sex was so fucking great that I feel like I have a small thermonuclear device going off in my urethra every time I pee! Lemme do that again!!"

I'm not gonna say "I feel your pain", but you've got my sympathy. You deserve a little mercy methinks. Here's crossing fingers to good drugs and a speedy resolution.

[karl elvis]

Yeah you know, my second-hand experience (via a GF who used to get UTIs all the time) is, d-mannose works really well if used as a preventative. It won't cure a UTI, but it's a weird, non-digestable sugar that binds the objectionable bacteria to it, and the takes said bacteria out with the urine.

Said girlfriend stopped getting 'em while she was using d-mannose, but then started getting 'em again when she stopped. She *always* used to get them after marathon sex, so there was an ulterior motive in getting them prevented, aside from her comfort. B^)

[G]

Ohhhh man, UTIs. The last time I had one, I went straight to gyno, she gave me antibiotics, and in two days it was gone. I <3 her: she works magic.

I've become very strict myself about peeing after sex, at least within three hours post-coitus, no matter how sleepy or comfortable I feel. Ever since last summer, when had knocked boots with a boy the night before I flew to Hawaii...and had a UTI ruin the entire first half of my vacation. Sucks trying to surf and go to a luau when you feel like you need to pee every five minutes.

I hate UTIs. I'm sorry you have one. :(

[Bad Kitty]

Oh, dang. That's awful. Feel better!

[ana]

ouch. i got a uti once, while visiting my long distance boyfriend in the states. couldnt get antibiotics without the prescription and couldnt go to the doctor without paying a ton of cash... so i just endured it for 2 weeks, which included a roadtrip and a window seat on a 13 hour flight back home in which i had to go to the toilet every half an hour.

worse 2 weeks of my life.

[The Tom Brady of Oceanography]

I don't know what you mean, but I just saw MIke Doughty if that will ease any of your pain.

[coraline]

I don't know if you know about these, but everyone should -- my doctor always gives me a scrip for them along with UTI antibiotics, but they're also available OTC. They are a lifesaver -- they totally take away the pain from the UTI until the antibiotics have kicked in enough to take care of things.
http://medichest.com/azoutianalgesictablets32.html
Warning: they make you pee electric-orange.

[Caroline]

If the antibiotics haven't yet helped with the pain, I highly recommend getting some phenazopyridine hydrochloride from CVS- it should be packaged as 'Urinary Pain Relief.' Your pee will turn a charming, unnatural shade of orange, but it'll definitely help until it clears up. Good luck!

[donna]

hi chelsea, i know you said you hate self-treatments and that you have your cipro now. but maybe in the future instead of the cranberry thing, try this. it works for me within 24 hours, and i've gotten the UTIs with the blood.

all you do is mix a teaspoon of baking soda into a glass of water and drink as much of it as you can. it tastes lousy but it works! because: we get infections because our bodies are too acidic. changing the pH level to more alkaline gets rid of the infection.

[Calico]

Oh God, you have my utmost sympathies. UTIs make me curl up on the floor and pray for death.

If you don't already have the orange-pee-making medicine, I highly recommend it. That and a few Advil every four hours. It starts acting in hours and will take away the urgency and the pain during the 24 hours it will take the antibiotics to kick in.

Good luck...

[Tears]

My mom does the teaspoon of baking soda in a glass of water all the time and swears by it.

[badinfluencegirl]

i drink uratonic or cranaid tea. they both have cranberry and uva ursi in them and work pretty well. i drink cran juice too but i can't tolerate much. you have to drink one (or two if it was a near thing) more bags of tea than you think you do...

i have a sort of sense of when i've lost the fight though and you better bet your ass that i take my hurting little bladder straight to the doctor when that happens!

i have a trusty walk-in clinic nearby...

sometimes if you get up and drink the cran juice right away OR let the shower hit your vagina it helps.

oh i nearly forgot! i'm sensitive to latex and got WAY LESS uti's when i switched to polyurethane...

[Gentle]

Been there, too, and in a foreign country in which their brand of Cipro made me break out in a Jungle Rash which also looked to kill (actually possible if the rash goes into your throat...)

I ended up finding this new med, an orange-pee-maker. Later I learned my gram was on it the last few years of her life for chronic UTIs in her 90s. BE CAREFUL LADIES--it caused her lungs to scar permanently, leading to her demise. The drugs that cure us can eventually kill us.

[Penny]

This is exactly what I'm going through this weekend. And I do blame the lassitude of joyful satisfaction. It's so unfair to have to pay for pleasure with pain!