Newbie: Cystocele, Pessary, Bladder Infections, Kidney Pain, Bloating - I Am Conflicted

Thank you so much for your kind help, Louise & granolamom!

After I posted, I used some vaginal bioidentical estriol cream and took a benadryl, the latter allowing me to sleep for about 4 hours (I have slept no more than about 4 hours for each of the last three nights). I have a call in to my doctor right now and am waiting for a response.

I agree that it would be a good idea for me to receive instruction on dealing with the pessary myself. You are absolutely right - I am sure I would feel more peaceful about it if I had the freedom to remove it regularly. I am also concerned about the risk of pessary use, yet I feel that I am in a catch-22 situation, because my symptoms are even worse without one, and it seems that I am quantitatively more prone to infection without one as well.

(BTW, the pessary was required during pregnancy because at 11 weeks, I suddenly was unable to pee and had to go meet my ob-gyn at the ER. The baby had grown to the point that my retroverted uterus was compressing my urethra. Over a liter of urine was drained with a catheter, and the pessary was installed to hold my uterus in the anteverted position until the baby grew large enough that the uterus could not retrovert and interfere with urination again during the pregnancy. The doctor told me at the time that most ob-gyns never see this, but that it is in the textbooks.)

I have been around this mountain before re: my present symptoms, and it is perplexing. I have had nearly identical symptoms at different times with both the pessary in and the pessary out. Bladder infections were discovered in both circumstances, but more often when the pessary was out. And I have also had these symptoms once when there was NO clinical result of infection, though it is possible that I had a subclinical infection even then. But in that instance, the symptoms resolved within 24 hours.

I do know that UTI's can lead to sepsis (and kidney involvement and damage) if left untreated, and must be addressed promptly, but it does get exhausting that this is the 4th time in 2 1/2 months (since June 17th) that I've had to be checked for this. So though it would have been more ideal to deal with it in the middle of the night, I knew I had to face it first thing in the morning anyway...

I have had cultures done, and there is also an excellent women's physical therapist in the area (one of two in the state) who has worked with me and done pelvic exams. She also performed a couple of EMG's on my pelvic muscles. After about 4 weeks with the new pessary - after being without one, the EMG results showed that the resting pelvic muscle tension was reduced from a 17 to a 5 - a vast improvement.

As far as medication allergies, I wasn't really suspecting an allergy to this particular low-dose antibiotic, but rather to the pessary material itself, since I am allergic to band-aids and IV tape that is not paper tape. But that is a rather small suspicion as I have used pessaries without problems in the past.

Antibiotics can also cause GI distress (which is not usually an allergic reaction to the med), yet with my regular use of probiotics and live yogurt cultures, it is unlikely that GI symptoms would appear after 28 days of the antibiotic usage.

I can't thank both of you enough for your encouragement, and also for the tip on position for fully emptying the bladder. I have been into complementary medicine and natural foods for more than 30 years (since my late teens), so now I will begin to learn the helpful postures and other modifications. I will be soaking up all knowledge that I can from this site.

P.S. The doctor called as I was typing this, and my husband and I are off to Patient First for a white blood count and urinalysis. The doc said to make sure that PF sends it out for culture whether it appears positive or negative, as sometimes a negative specimen will still start to divide with an identifiable organism after a few days.

granolamom; I don't think you sounded overzealous at all - many people don't realize that delaying treatment for a UTI can lead to permanent kidney damage or even death.

I am so sorry to hear about how ill you were last summer. Thankfully, that is behind you, and I hope you never experience anything like it again.

That is fine to ask me any questions that you want to.

The website for the P.T. that I use, where I had the pelvic EMG's, is obgyn-physicaltherapy dot com. I work with Cora Huitt, and she has been great. Some people drive for a few hours to go to her for help, but if you are far away, it may still be worth a call to her office to see if she has info on anyone close to you doing similar things.

We just returned from Patient First and there is no acute infection, so that is ruled out, thankfully. There was just a small amount of red blood cells in my urine, but that is nothing new. The pain continues, but the urologist told me just to take more benadryl at night to try to catch up on sleep until I can be seen after the holiday tomorrow. Though I don't see the point in them seeing me, as I've been in for a similar situation last year when there was no infection - at that time the gyn did order a pelvic ultrasound which turned out to be ok. The doctors really can't do anything (except give me pain pills, which I will not take anyway), but it probably wouldn't hurt to have another pelvic ultrasound.

My goal in going to PF was just to confirm or to rule out infection - I can wait a bit to deal with the pain while trying to catch up on a little sleep tonight. :-)