UTI help needed
in Health ·
I’d like to weigh in on this discussion—my most recent bout of cystitis escalated into acute pyelonephritis, which is essentially a kidney infection. I just wrapped up a ten-day course of Advil, taking 500 mg twice a day. My main concern now is how to prevent something this severe from happening again. I deal with these symptoms relatively frequently, maybe a few times a year, but I usually manage to clear them up with some cranberry juice or herbal tea. This time, I honestly thought I had it under control, only to wake up a week later with a 104-degree fever. It turns out E. coli was the culprit. If I submit a urine sample for a culture the very first day I feel symptoms, it takes about eight days to get the isolate and the antibiogram back, so what am I supposed to do in the meantime? Does it actually make sense to jump straight onto antibiotics blindly, knowing how resistant E. coli can be and the risk that the medication might not even work, or worse, that I'm just helping other bacteria develop resistance?