Any recurrent/chronic UTI sufferers? Please help

[chronicUTI]

I got my first UTI in ages (few years) on 4th September. Started middle of the night, urgency was constant and severe, couldn’t sleep and had to slap my self whilst passing urine (extremely sore), visible blood in my urine and generally feeling run down with back pain.

Called 111 and thankfully a 111 GP called back quickly and let me pick up antibiotics immediately in the night because I couldn’t wait until 8am.
Nitrofurantoin 100mg twice daily for three days. I felt better in 24 hours, but finished my course. No alcohol, caffeine or sex either.

7 days after the first UTI, I wake up in the night again with that familiar twinge and I’m panicking already. Notice strip of blood in urine, and within an hour there’s more blood.
Urgency and pain is there but not as severe as first UTI. Call 111 because it’s an alarming amount of blood (twice it looked as dark as red wine) however 111 GP doesn’t call me back for ages. Tried calling local GP for an appointment but they didn’t give me one (didn’t for the first uti either it was only 111 who did anything).

In meantime I’d carried on flushing out with water throughout day, d-mannose, probiotics, vitamin D, no spicy or acidic foods. Although I had visible blood for 4-5 hours, overall the pain and urgency was less than first UTI, and miraculously it decreased by itself a lot. By the time I collected my second antibiotic prescription from local hospital in evening (cefalexin for 7 days) I had no symptoms and blood was no longer visible. I still pushed to have urine sample taken, and the Dr commented he could still see microscopic blood in my sample. I was told if I felt fine I wouldn’t need to take second prescription (cefalexin) antibiotics unless urine sample came back positive or started to feel unwell again.

I stupidly started to wonder that perhaps it was bladder lining irritation rather than infection seeing as I didn’t feel as unwell as first UTI and most symptoms improved within 12 hours by themselves (although large amount of blood was strange).

On weekend I had no visible blood, and peeing on average every 1.5 - 2hours. I noticed at times I had sensitivity in bladder/urethra but luckily not noticing pain passing urine.

Monday 15th I wake up with pressure on my lower abdomen, a dulling pain and then a more sensitive raw feeling in urethra. Now I’m back to feeling panicked as I know it’s not normal and I didn’t have this on Friday evening for example. By lunchtime I have blood in urine again, and I immediately start antibiotics. I call 111 but they can’t do anything other than recommend I book with my local GP (impossible).

I’m terrified I am at risk of chronic / recurrent UTI already and it may be embedded due to nothing showing up in nhs urine sample.

I got a private prescription for hiprex arriving tomorrow, which I’m thinking of starting to help with prevention of further recurrence. I’m nervous as heard this can cause bladder pain for sensitive individuals?

Please can anyone who has been through similar let me know how they managed to beat this awful condition. I’ve since had to cancel going to a festival, theatre trip and my holiday to France because of this.

I’ve tried booking with Portland hospital UTI specialist Dr’s but they’re booked up until January 2026 and feel NHS aren’t much help. Dr Cat Anderson not accepting new patients

I’ve since been up all night to research evidence for any supplements that may potentially work synergistically with antibiotics, and biofilm busters to enhance effectiveness of cefalexin.

Sorry it’s early and I’m half asleep. But did you take the 2nd lot of antibiotics?

The Hiprex will help, one twice a day. They say take it with high dose vitamin C.
You could do with antibiotics for a couple of weeks ideally but that’s hard.

Also how old
are you? Vaginal oestrogen really important

Sounds like you didn’t kick the infection the first time. Sometimes 3 days doesn’t totally get rid and it hangs around. I’ve had that before and if I drank loads of water I could keep it at bay but ultimately I needed a longer course to irradiate.

I find UTI ‘s can be sneaky
i’m very prone to them
I wouldn’t worry just yet though , they can come and go (or seem to) I had one last year that had me up most of the night passing blood in agony , then the next day miraculously I felt fine. However the next day it was back again .

I’ve had 3 day antibiotics not be enough but I’ve cleared it with 3 days also. I make sure I take then with food AND a glass of milk .

ive made good use of the Boots service where you can bypass the gp

ive had samples come back clear even though they were pink with blood!

it’s awful. I’m sorry you felt you had to cancel your holiday .

Try not to panic. I imagine its because the first lot of antibiotics did not kill the bug. There may also be inflammation that will take time to subside. Avoiding caffeine, alcohol and spicy things for a while is a good idea. Id also second the person who said vaginal estrogen if you are over 40. Also probiotics e.g Optibac for women when you finish the antibiotics. Hope you feel better. Xxx

Thanks all, I’m in my twenties and on yasmin contraceptive pill which has synthetic estrogen.

Will likely avoid caffeine, alcohol, spices and sex for a month or so tbh, so scared to risk more damage.

I currently have optibac for women probiotic too and eating kefir yoghurt (trying not to take too close to the cefalexin to avoid wasting it).

Has anyone here had experience of hiprex? There is medical evidence that this antiseptic can help people prevent UTI recurrence but depends on how it’s tolerated

I suffered all through my 20’s with constant UTI’s. Had all sorts of investigations and eventually took an antibiotic every day for 18mths. It Stopped in my 30’s when I had kids and came off the combined pill and used condoms instead.
Now in my 50’s, when I went to GP to discuss HRT, we discussed UTI’s and my past history…”oh yes, she piped up, the pill is well known for being a contributory factor in UTI’s in some women” FFS, could some one have not mentioned that and saved me a decade of misery!

My advice would be try stopping the pill for 6mths or so, use condoms, shower immediately after sex and see if that helps you. You have my sympathy it’s miserable. You are taking pain killers aren’t you? It took me quite a while to realise that paracetamol helped!

Urghh you poor thing, uti stuff is the absolutely worst. I had a cathetar put in during an ER visit and had recurrent utis for a few months after. Through that found out I was actually allergic to the normal antibiotics they use for it but that’s beside the point. I think (like another user said) it sounds like the bacteria wasn’t properly killed off during your antibiotic rounds, or perhaps a couple of strands were resistant? I was at one point prescribed an antibiotic by a hospital but got a call a few days later to say their testing showed my uti bacteria was resistant to that antibiotic and that I needed to use a stronger one. Do you know if your samples are being tested like this? I wonder if it’s because it was the hospital or if they always do it. Anyway, I feel your pain and feel so bad for you, I hope it clears soon. Even just thinking about it is making me very aware of my urethra. My mother in law said to drink bicarbonate and water to relieve that pain and it did actually help a bit but do your own research on that in case it’s bad advice.