The OP is much more likely to have gotten a UTI from not washing their hands; sure, it very well could have come from the woman but I highly doubt by any deliberate action (I wonder how the OP thinks the urine got into their drink, and if it tasted funny, then why did they drink it, suspected contamination or not?).
Medical advice is better suited to IMHO than GQ. And as has been pointed out, if you think you might have a serious illness, seeing a medical professional is a much better strategy than asking random strangers on an internet site you just joined.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
It is dangerous to take antibiotics that you got from a friend. Not all antibiotics are effective against all infections. A lot of UTI bacteria are resistant to amoxicillin nowadays, in fact.
The safest thing to do would be to go to the hospital and allow them to do a culture and sensitivity if they do find a source of infection. Then they can tell from the sensitivity results what antibiotic is appropriate for the infection, if there is any.
However, it is not medically possible to catch a UTI from drinking urine, so I really do not think that is the cause for this.
What was it that led you to believe that she put urine in the drink? Was it just because of the timing?
Are you kidding? Maybe if you’re rich with good insurance.
For a putative bacteria to make it from your digestive system into your bladder, it’s going to have to go through your blood, as has been said. Bacterial infection of the blood is sepsis, and sepsis is immediately life-threatening. So if, as you say, you got a bladder infection from drinking something, you somehow managed to skip right over the “dying from sepsis” part of the program. To put it kindly, your story doesn’t really ring true.
Yeah only rich people get them fancy personalized prescriptions and diagnoses.
No more the:
Who the hell gets that done for a UTI?
My doc does this routinely. She’ll check my urine in the office for things like white blood cells and blood that indicate a probable infection. I then get put on Bactrim, the standard script for UTIs (definitely not Ammoxicillan sp?). The specimen then gets sent out to be cultured to make sure the Bactrim is the proper med for that particular bacteria. I’ve never actually gotten a follow up call but she assures me that she would call if indeed a different med was needed.
Huh wow, my mom’s doc after she complained of recurring UTI’s told her she was hitting some kind of prescription limit told her to fill the script and take just a few and save the rest for the next time it bothered her. Yes that sounds absolutely bizarre.
I see what you did there.
Pretty much, except that it’s more like, “keep them on your skin and you won’t get sick, but if they get inside a cut or inside your bladder, you’re going to regret it.” The vast majority of UTI’s are caused by e.coli. Some are caused by staph or strep. There are a few weird exceptions, but they’re generally only seen in immunocompromised patients, like people with AIDS or on chemotherapy.
Sounds like it could have been a pain killer or something to soothe spasms or an irritated urethra, not an antibiotic. Or your mom misunderstood the directions. A doctor prescribing an antibiotic like that should be taken up before his licensing board.
That being said, in my experience, most doctors do NOT order a culture for a UTI. They have their nurse perform a urine dipstick test, maybe, which just tells them that there are some nitrites and white blood cells in there and an infection is likely. Matched with symptoms, and they diagnose a UTI without much more specificity than that and Bactrim’s your uncle. Only if Bactrim doesn’t work, repeatedly, and you throw a temper tantrum in their office and threaten to switch doctors do they deign to do a culture. Maybe.
If the urine test didn’t involve wiping with special wipes beforehand and spreading the labia with one hand while peeing a little and then peeing in the cup (a “clean catch” test) then it wasn’t sent for a culture, just a dipstick.
reno876, it sounds like you have a pretty stressful job. I can relate - I’m a home health nurse, and sometimes it really seems like the patients are out to make my life a living hell. Mostly it’s because they’re sick and frustrated and depressed and lonely, but let’s face it, some people are just assholes. Still, even if she was nasty enough to put some of her urine in your drink, you can’t catch her UTI by drinking it. It just doesn’t work that way.
Also, just because the hospital did a blood test and told you that you have an infection, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the infection is IN the blood. It probably isn’t, or you wouldn’t be feeling well enough to come home and do internet research. Blood infections (septicemia*) hit really hard and fast, and people often die within hours without treatment. So if you’re not dead, you probably don’t have that. Rather, they probably found extra white blood cells in your blood. When you have an infection somewhere in your body, your body makes extra white blood cells to fight the infection. If we take some blood and count the white blood cells, a higher then normal number tells us you probably have an infection somewhere. But it doesn’t tell us where in your body, or what kind of infection, or the best way to treat it, which is why they wanted to do some more tests.
Anyhow, yes, if you’re not feeling well, you should go back to the hospital, a doctor or an urgent care clinic.
Hope you feel better soon. And try to find a different caregiver for your patient. Life is too short to work with hateful people, and there’s no shortage of clients in home health care!
*There’s another kind of “blood infection” called bacteremia, and that just means there’s a small amount of bacteria in your blood and it’s not worth worrying about - like when you squeeze a pimple and some of the pimple bacteria gets into your blood. Your body will find those bacteria and kill them without any help, most of the time.
Sounds odd to me since not finishing a prescription can cause recurrent infections since the infection isn’t fully knocked out. I got yelled at by a different doc for doing just that.
Welcome to the Straight Dope Message Board, reno876!
Yeah, I got nothin’. Agreed that a UTI from something ingested sounds unlikely and worrying if true.
You could be misunderstanding what exactly is going on. I hope those of us who know more about medicine can help clear things up.
And developing a UTI within hours of ingesting the alleged urine drink sounds improbable also. Even if you applied the urine to your urethra, I doubt an infection could manifest itself that fast.
So you live in a state that requires two doctors’ signatures before admitting you anyway?
When opening this thread I thought it was going to be someone griping about a bad-tasting lemon-lime soft drink.
It strikes me as next to impossible that anyone could develop a urinary tract infection within hours of being exposed through a contaminated drink. Possibly by accident via lack of sufficient handwashing, yes. As for developing bacteremia (organisms in the blood) detectable by blood culture as the result of a UTI, this is certainly possible, but even if that happened it doesn’t necessarily mean a case of sepsis. Septic people typically do not scour the internet for remedies; they’re too sick.
Given the many misconceptions in the OP’s story, I suspect it is either a made-up concoction or the author is so misinformed that it is hazardous for her to take care of sick people.
By the way, taking amoxicillin for a urinary tract infection these days is risky, seeing how often a common pathogen like E. coli is resistant to this drug.
Heh.
It’s not always done with a routine outpatient UTI, but if someone’s sick enough to be admitted to the hospital, possibly septic (as apparently the OP is/was?), it’s a normal part of the process of figuring out the infection and trying to treat it quickly/accurately. Often the urinalysis is ordered with a “reflex culture” (automatically cultured if there is evidence of infection in the urine) in hospitals.
Shotgunning antibiotics when you’re not sure what bacteria you’re treating (if any) and if the bacteria is sensitive to the antibiotic is kind of like taking out a payday loan: Poor people might do it out of desperation, but it has a high risk of causing bigger trouble down the road. Therefore, I can’t recommend the practice.
The warm months of 2012 have been epic.
The staff always gets first pick. There’s damn few perks to this job, and we have to look out after ourselves.
I, for one, am gonna pass on most of the OP’s stuff, though.
Urine the money.
mmm
I would say…grab some cranberry juice and then wheel yourself to the nearest emergency room.
Oh wait…
nm.