my rant of the day: doctors

So on Sunday night I felt like I had a UTI coming on. The pain, urgency, & frequency were unbelievable. I even saw visible blood in my urine. This is a chronic problem for me, so I am very good at recognizing this. And it is a chronic problem for A LOT of women.

I worry most about my kidneys, if you delay treatment it can spread up into the kidneys & that is a MAJOR deal, you can even die from that. And I certainly don't want to be dealing with a kidney infection while I'm pregnant, much less any other time.

Almost every doc I've ever been to knows that it's frequently a chronic problem for some women & they know that that woman knows her body & knows when she has a UTI. Now, granted, some docs will still make you supply a urine sample, at least the first time they see you for a UTI, just to make sure you do know what you're talking about. But then they give you an antibiotic right away. And once they know they can trust the woman they will sometimes just give her an antibiotic for it without requiring a urine specimen.

Just about every doc I've ever been to has been like this, even Kaiser was like this! (No offense to those who have & actually like Kaiser, we just had really bad experiences with them)

And yet I spent Monday drinking tons of water hoping to flush out whatever bacteria was there & possibly not need an antibiotic. I know it never works, sometimes it will temporarily, but later on it will return full force. But I still always try. So on Tuesday I was in so much pain I gave up & called my OB. I went early that morning & gave them a urine sample. They said they require that before they can prescribe anything.

So I waited all day Tuesday & all day Wednesday & heard nothing. I called this morning demanding to know what's taking so long & was told they'll call me back sometime this afternoon.

Now as a nurse I know you can get urinalysis results (which will confirm bacteria in urine) in less than 5 minutes. The culture (which shows which specific bacteria it is) does take longer to grow, but you can usually have a preliminary within 24 hours. It's now been over 48 hours............. And they usually just start antibiotics once the presence of bacteria is confirmed and then if the culture happens to show something that that antibiotic doesn't work for (which has never happened to me) they can always switch it. But once I've been on antibiotics for 24 hours the pain starts to go away, so YES I want to start them as soon as possible (not to mention that I want to start them early before it spreads to my kidneys).

I cannot believe the lack of consideration I am receiving with this from my OB's office. And I know if I call my primary doc he's gonna tell me to go through my OB right now cuz I'm pregnant.

So what am I to do?? I remembered that I have a backup UTI prescription in the house--macrobid!! I looked it up, it's safe during pregnancy unless you're near the end--greater than 38 weeks. So I started it on my own. Then when they finally get around to prescribing something I'll just keep that one as my emergency backup. :)

Pretty clever, huh?? I'm sure some reading this will frown upon this sort of thing, but those are probably people who don't suffer from UTIs. ;) Please have mercy on me & know that I do EVERYTHING known to prevent getting UTIs & it doesn't work for me (I have been told by several docs that I have some sort of anatomical defect that causes it).

So I think I'm gonna try a new experiment & just continue taking d-mannose every single day of my life & see if that will prevent future UTI's. My naturopathic doc that recommended it to me told me I didn't need to do this, but I'm gonna give it a shot & see what happens..............