Hi there,
For the past 9 months, I have been experiencing frequent UTI's, or so I think. Before June of last year, I had never had a UTI in my life. I started going out with my current boyfriend in April of last year and we started having sex in May. (Protected with condoms at first until I went on the pill in Dec. I had also never had unprotected sex up to this point and had only had 2 other sexual partners before my current boyfriend)
When I first started experiencing UTI symptoms, I brushed it off as a one time thing, drank loads of water and used over the counter medicine to help it on its way. I managed to flush it out myself so never went to the doctor about it.
Now it's almost a year later and I've had one almost every month since. But again, I've never gone to the doctor as I've been able to manage and eventually get rid of the symptoms myself. When I get them, they only last between a couple of days to a week.
For the past 3 months (Nov-Feb) I had not experienced any symptoms until the weekend after a drunken night out with my boyfriend. We had sex and a day or so later the symptoms started back up.
Now, my symptoms are always very specific. Localised pain/discomfort in urethral area. Burning/stinging directly after urination. Generally feeling unwell. Very cloudy urine. Only once did the pain present in my lower abdomen/bladder area.
My main question is, has anyone gone through the same thing and if so, what was the solution.
I have frantically googled about this on numerous occasions and all I tend to come back to is STI fact sheets. I really don't think it is caused by an STI as I always used condoms (and was very paranoid and careful about using them properly) right up until December when my symptoms started in June.
Does anyone have any idea of what could be going on or if what I'm experiencing is really a UTI?
Thanks in advance x