Feel fobbed off

[Snowbear96]

Since my second birth I have been getting thrush almost every month. The dr treated me for 6 months using fluconazole and it worked until I stopped taking it! When I went back with the issue they said its probably cycle related and to just treat it with a pessary when I get symptoms… no swab or anything like that to check if anything else is going on. At the end of the call he said he would put a referral to gynaecology to ask if there is anything else they can suggest. I thought great they will be able to help. This was in April and they have just come back last week saying their suggestion is to take oral contraceptives. This feels to me like Im being fobbed off completely. They haven't even looked into why I keep getting it. Buying pessaries every month gets expensive and the last thing I want to do is go on contraception. It doesn't agree with me and I stopped taking it almost 10 years ago. Has anyone else had this suggested? It may work it may not but honestly feel like any problems and women are just told to take contraception and it annoys me. I cant even imagine how it feels to be fobbed off with things like endo and PCOS.

Sorry for the rant but after 2.5 years I am very fed up with my sexual well being.

It's unlikely as they've responded back with advice. So a re-referral will likely not do anything either, because the secondary team triage referrals. So who needs a face to face and to be seen periodically, who the GP can deal with if we give them some advice on try x and x first, let it work for upwards of x months, and if all of that doesn't work then come back to us.

The pill can actually help with thrush, you may have to do trial and error with a few different ones, but it can help. I wouldn't go on one that you used to have problems with, but there are many different ones to try. Maybe also another prescription of fluconazole or something similar.

Do you have any other issues? Anything urinary? If not, then it wouldn't really warrant a referral to uro-gyne. But if you do it may.

If you fancy tackling the problem yourself, take a look at the Candida diet. The rationale is basically that thrush is a yeast infection, yeasts eat sugars, if you cut out sugars and carbs in your diet the yeast starves and dies off.
Might be worth a google.

Hi OP. You could try a women's heath probiotic to try and restore the balance of good bacteria in your vagina e.g. Optibac for women.

I had this OP before having my son, and then for a few months at the beginning of this year. A really high strength probiotic is what cleared it up for me

Sorry I should have added, OP your best chance is push for a referral to urology or uro-gyne clinic. You'll be much more likely to see someone then, and they should definitely accept you since you've had issues for years. Gyne on its own, I'm not sure, especially if you do it now, as they'll just say you haven't followed the advice.

What do you mean by "really high strength probiotic"?

The thing is probiotics need to be taken at the right time and under the right circumstances

Try the thrush diet

Thrush is fucking miserable

Also have they checked you for diabetes right?

Friend had this, she was very anaemic. Low on iron, iron supplements stopped the thrush from coming back.

@Charabanc it was the 100 billion strain of Acidophilus I was advised to take by the pharmacist (bought from Holland and Barrett). Appreciate it won’t work for everyone but it fixed it for me (I had already been checked for diabetes)

Hi
I had chronic thrush for about 3 years so I feel your pain. It makes you completely miserable. I was fobbed off by GP also. Had many instances where swabs were taken and all came back clear, tested for Diabetes, iron was low put on tablets etc etc, just kept being prescribed pessaries (thankfully I did not have to buy these myself as they are expensive) thought there was no end in sight until I started taking these tablets they're called 'Bioglan Biotic Balance Ultimate Flora 30 Capsules' you can get them from Boots or Holland and Barrett, they're abit pricey at around £24 but I bulk buy them when on special offer (such as Boots £10 Tuesday or H&B half price/buy one get one free) ive been taking them for about 7- 8 months now and ive not had a bout of Thrush since. I am over the moon and I can only put it down to these tablets so they're worth every penny. Theyre live gut bacteria. Ive tried a similar one before from another brand that had added Garlic in them and they didnt help me other than make me smell like Garlic down below, but these one I can't recommend enough.

Thank you all so much for your replies. Im not even sure it is thrush anymore. I have treated it but my skin outside feels so itchy. Maybe there is something else going on

Erm, I hate to say this OP, but have you been checked for STIs?

@Charabancno I haven’t. My partner WFH and when leaving the house me or the kids are always with him. Unless he cheated 3+ years ago 🤷🏻‍♀️. Nothing has ever shown up on my swabs

I went through a stage of getting recurrent thrush. It was miserable and in between the bouts of thrush it still felt not right down there. In the end they said I had eczema down there, perhaps brought on by all the thrush episodes, which meant even when I wasn’t having a thrush outbreak it still felt a bit sore and itchy. They put me on fluconazole once a week for a year or so to sort the thrush out and gave me some mild hydrocortisone cream for the eczema. That seemed to sort everything out. I still get thrush occasionally and these days I buy the pessaries online as it’s much cheaper.