Guys With UTI's

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Damn. Another 5-day stretch of weekend plus sickdays on either end (and thank god the weekend was where it was) because of urinary tract infection.

First there is that smell. Pee smells like a sackfull of fermenting sour gym socks, the whole room fills up with that smell. Then after you finish peeing you feel kind of like someone kneed you gently in the balls, nothing dramatic but gee I’ve got to lay down for awhile. Then if it gets worse, when you lay down it burns like someone had rubbed habañero peppers up the inside of your urethra. And 45 minutes later, gee I need to pee…

C’mon, tell me I’m not the only guy who gets this. All my girlfriends have been eminently susceptible. I don’t get it as often as the chicks do but this is my fourth case of it. Meanwhile the doctors look at me strangely: “Men are not supposed to get UTI’s.” They test me for chlamydia, syphilis, gonorrhea. Negative. I steal my girlfriends’ Macrobid pills for a few days, which the damn docs are slow to prescribe. (D’ya mind? I’d like to dose this mess NOW not 4 days from now?!!??)

Stupid pee buggies.

2

IANAD, but I can tell you what we tell our spinal cord injury patients, who are very susceptible to UTIs;

Drink lots of water and cranberry juice, but avoid alcohol.

Pee before sex and immediately after sex. (Hey, at least I am not saying avoid having sex)

Hope this clears up soon.

:frowning:

3

http://www.angelfire.com/mo2/animals1/catfish/candiru.html
errr, are you sure it’s a UTI and not something else you’ve been doing lately?

4

Owww!

Caught@Work, you are wicked and evil!

5

I had one several years back, from not peeing after having sex in that, erm, OTHER hole. Not a good time. It backs up and I get prostatitus (inflamed prostate gland). So, the doc finds THAT out with the finger-up-the-butt trick, and schedules me in for a better look, from the other end. They snaked a fiber-optic camera up my urethra (why, oh, why did I complain about the finger-up-the-butt?) to get a look-see, and find it is NOT prostate cancer, but they DO find something on the skin of my, erm, “member”, and they want to take a biopsy. With a scalpel. So, traumatized by a camera that went where no man should ever have a camera, they then slice a hunk out of my, you-know-what, and stitch it up. (baseball-baseball-janet-reno-baseball-please-please-don’t-get-hard) Luckily my new bride was out in CA visiting her married not-so-ex-boyfriend (I later found out), so sex was not on the menu for me during recovery. The biopsy was negative, I did not have Human Papilloma Virus, but a clogged pore.

6

So you had poo on your peter?

7

And at least you’re not saying to pee during sex! (That’s an entirely other thread.)

UncleBeer, I’m amazed Mr. Happy even considered getting hard with a scalpel in the same room.

Of course, that’s probably another thread altogether as well.

8

Clogged pores cause pimples, so rather than poop on the Peter it was a pimple on the penis.

9

May I be the first to say:

“Ewww!”:eek:

I stumble in here - eating lunch in front of my computer, none less - wondering what UTI is an acronym for. Now, I’m just a little less ignorant (and a lot less hungry!). How about a little TMI warning for future UTI posts, ya? :slight_smile:

10

A few points of clarification:

  1. I am UncleBill, not UncleBeer. I have no knowledge whatsoeverof his tallywhacker.

  2. Mr Happy was most certainly flaccid during that procedure, up to and including the sutures. I did NOT want Mr. Happy getting happy AFTER the sutures were put in, over the next week. Bad way to get stitches out, ifyaknowwhatimean.

  3. Call it what you will, I got bad stuff in the urethra.

11

I had cystitis as a baby (so I’m told) and I’ve had it a few times since, though not for a good 5 years now. Apparently, some people are simply prone to it.

Contact with spermicide (foam or condoms) triggers nasty pain, too. Guess I’ve just got a sensitive urethra (hey, I’ve got a sensitive everything-else).

In my experience, antiotics get rid of UTI really quickly. The Doc also gives you little black pills that kill the pain of peeing (and make your pee a vivid orange).

Cranberry juice is supposed to be good for it and (IIRC) might help ward off prostate cancer. And yes, drink water (as opposed to “gummy” liquids like soda, juice or diuretics like beer, coffee), especially if you’re sweating in warm weather. You need to flush your system out.

And last, be thankful you’re not a women. The stuff they put up with…

12

As well as cranberry juice you can take these Ural (brand name) urinary alkaliser sachets. However there seems to be differing opinion on how acidic/alkaline it’s best for your urine to be when trying to recover from cystitis/UTI. Some places also recommend lots of vitamin C.

The one thing that’s universal is drink masses of water which I personally find even more difficult than taking thousands of nasty pills.

13

My husband is prone to UTI’s (oddly enough - I’ve never had one myself. Yet another role-reversal in our marriage…)

The OP is right - a lot of folks don’t think men get these. They do.

In my hubby’s case, having a regular doctor who knows his vulnerability to these infections helps a lot. Ring-ring-ring “Hello? Oh, you again? Same problem? OK, we’ll do what we did last time, call me back if you don’t see improvement in 3 days”

Actually, now that hubby’s in his 40’s he gets regular trips to the urologist. I realize you guys don’t particularly like going to the doctor for any reason, but if you’ve got a tendency towards problems in the region consider that regular check-ups and finding problems early beats the heck out of things like prostatitis, cameras up Mr. Happy, and things like indwelling catheters for the truly nasty cases. Not to mention the potential damage from things like kidney infections if things truly go haywire.

14

And FTR, I’m a girl. I’ve just finished undergoing a whole bunch of not fun tests to try to see if something anatomically was wrong. It wasn’t. So, my doc’s advice:

  1. Take cranberry pills, not the juice. The juice has sugar added and this can actually feed those little bacterial bastards. The pill just concentrates the acid, which is what you need. Vitamin C works too; the idea is to acidify your urine to make it very bacteria-unfriendly.

  2. Always pee after sex, then go back and cuddle.

  3. Use the mildest soap you can find to wash that particular are.

  4. Try to avoid foods with a lot of potassium–bananas, tomatoes, etc.

  5. Lay off the caffeine. It can irritate the area.

  6. Wear cotton underwear.

  7. Don’t try to hold it when you have to urinate–go when you feel the need. (Doesn’t exactly work when you’re a teacher, though.)

  8. First, I must say IANAD. (How many acronyms have I used in this post?!) The last-ditch effort by my doc: take one MacroBid the moment I feel anything may be going awry in the area. The doc said that one antibiotic taken early enough will stop the infection right then and there. I haven’t had a UTI since January as a result. (Hey, long time for me.)

Beyond all this, lemme say I feel your pain! Hang in there!

15

UncleBill, a thousand apologies for confusing your Mr. Happy with UncleBeer’s Mr. Happy. It helps with the visuals to have it clear in my mind which poster’s penis I’m picturing.

16

It might help you to buy some of those over-the-counter pills for killing the pain of the UTI. Obviously, do not use these as a substitute for seeing a physician, but they help make them bearable. The brand name that I know of is Uristat.

Note - they will turn your urine orange. No, not dark yellow, I mean orange. Bright, day-glo, fluorescent orange. :eek:

17

Bumping this old thread to hopefully get some info from guys who have had this problem before.
When taking a leak, Did you always feel pain or discomfort when you had a UTI? I ask because in the past few weeks I have had to get up every night in the middle of the night to pee, and my urine has smelled awful recently too. But, no pain or no discomfort going on at all. I know that not being able to sleep through the night without peeing becomes common in men as you get older, but I’m only 31 and it’s not like this was a slow journey to where I am now…it was normal sleeping pattern (maybe having to get up to pee a couple times a month) and then in the last month I have found I have been up probably 4 out of every 5 nights to pee.

So…more frequent pee, stinky pee, but no pain. Symptoms of UTI?

18

Say hey and halleujah, I am here with the answer:

D-Mannose.

As a female, I’ve had UTIs before (had two this year, in fact), and verily, they do suck. I got my second this year so quickly after the first that I didn’t want to go back to the doctor and ask for more drugs, so I did some research to find if there were any other ways of defeating this nasty affliction. Found out about the cranberry, and the water, and the peeing, but the winner seems to be the D-Mannose.

D-Mannose is a form of sugar found naturally in fruits. Although it is sweet, it’s a lot like fiber in that it’s indigestible. Here’s the good part, however - according to the research I read, D-Mannose binds to the various nasties in the bladder and carries them out of the body, ridding you of the infection.

The research I was able to dig up stated that while cranberry seemed to help, they really didn’t know if it did or not, or if it was some sort of placebo effect. The cranberry does make the bladder more acidic, which in theory may help kill the bacteria, but no one’s been able to confirm whether it does or not. The research I read did seem to indicate that D-Mannose really works. Of course, it may be that I read this research on biased sites, but there you go.

So I bought some. And hey and halleujah, I’m UTI free. Yes, it’s anecdotal, but if you’re trying cranberry, you might as well try this too. D-Mannose is a powder; you can put it in water (or any other drink, I spose) or I guess you could just down a spoonful of the stuff. It’s sweet, and it tastes good. You can buy it labeled simply as D-Mannose, or you can buy it under one of several brand names (the one I have is called “UTI Edge.” Google is your friend.

And take Ferret Herder’s advice too - get some Uristat (there’s also some others under a different name) to help with the pain and the feeling of “I gotta go now!” even when nothing happens. It helps a good deal. But wear old crappy underwear - that color’s amazing!

19

Out of a sort of morbid curiosity, what exactly does the peeing before/during*/after sex accomplish?
*Left that one in for PunditLisa.

20

It cleans out the urethra in men. The semen and urine both come out the same tube, and the urine is supposed to clear out any nasties that may get in there.

Personally, I have had a UTI/bladder infection since mid-July. Getting awfully tired of it. Because I’m pregnant, they can’t give me anything really strong to kill it, and I’ve been on ampicillin twice, then cephalexin once, and now on four-times-daily cephalexin until the baby is born. Joy. At least it doesn’t hurt when I pee.