UTIs

I'm training as a health care worker, but am not a diagnostician. Do you have access to a nurse call center through your insurance carrier? That may be a place to start, then get seen where you can. Flank pain is a big red flag, and you may wish to seek care at an off -hours clinic. It is entirely possible that your UTI was not successfully treated with the antibiotics. Did you take the full course, or just the two pills that made you feel better? Was there a sensitivity test done to identify the proper antibiotic to use, or were you just prescribed "the usual"? It is also possible that you are fighting a drug resistant strain, especially if you've had several recently treated infections. Best wishes, I hope you can seek care soon for this.

highly recommend you get it checked out as soon as you can.
I had a UTI (my first one really) and partially treated it with lots of fluids and cranberry juice. all symptoms disappeared. then I had some flank pain, assumed it was my back acting up.
that night I nearly passed out on my way to the bathroom, with shaking chills and a fever of 104.5.
the UTI traveled up to my kidney. almost landed me in the hospital if not for a good friend and excellent dr (who takes no insurance so he can practice the way he likes...has a full lab in his office and the ability to properly monitor patients so he can keep people like me at home rather than admit, a good thing as I had a newborn at the time!)
after a week of antibiotic injections (ouch!) and a month of oral antibiotics I was almost back to myself. took over two months till I was healthy again.

I do not take UTI's lightly.

This is probably a good time to remind Members of the importance of emptying your bladder as completely as you can, at least once a day, to flush out stale urine which can accumulate bacteria. Stale urine, especially if it has become concentrated, can irritate the bladder lining. This inflammation makes bladder infection easier as well. You may have inflammation, but only traces of infection.

Try and drink more too, so the urine in your bladder becomes more dilute. The extra volume of urine will be helpful for flushing the bladder out. Try and get your bladder pretty full before emptying, This also means that your muscular bladder wall and its sphincters get a real workout every day just by functioning. Don't fall into the trap of thinking that if you drink less, stress or urge incontinence is not going to be as much of a problem. The truth is the exact opposite. If your bladder never has to 'try' it is not going to become stronger or more responsive to nerve signals.

Complete emptying can be done on all fours in the shower or using a basin behind you. You can also do it by half squatting over the toilet, in firebreathing posture. Sit for a pee and eliminate as much as you can, then stand and squeeze out a bit more. Then stand completely, then sit down again and repeat. Do this several time or until no more drops come out. Doing a few kegels in between doesn't hurt either. So does pulling up your knickers and walking around the bathroom three times and going again.

Prhaps WW should publish a Peeing Poster to stick on the back of toilet doors? The ones about safe sex are so yesterday.

We could incorporate a Safe Sex message too. Mmm, I wonder if we could get a condom manufacturer to pay for the printing and distribution?

Is anyone in the condom industry???

Hi Rosebud
I am now thinking the back pain might be because you are overdoing the posture, but may be exacerbated by your rectocele. This happens to me sometimes, and I *do* feel it most during the night and first thing in the morning. When back muscles seize up I think they prevent abdominal muscles from contracting fully, which can lead to abdominal muscle weakness. I was just thinking about this last night while driving home from a dance class.

I have been doing a lot of lower back and hamstring stretches, and am trying to do more ground level tasks as a hip hinge, with relatively straight legs. However I am beginning to think that I really need to address the strength of all the muscles that flex the front half of my body and my hip joints. So it is leg raises for me for a while. I suggest you try the same and see if it makes a difference getting more strength on the front of your body.

Christine Kent, I don’t have a Captain’s chair, or whatever it is called, at my house. I know I can do straight leg raises standing. I was also thinking of hanging a broom handle from two verandah rafters at the wall, and hang from my arms, doing double bent- leg raises with my back against the wall. Would that exercise the right muscles? I can also do single raises as well, to challenge my obliques.
I guess the good thing about standing leg raises is that I can do them forward, back and to the side, so it exercises in all directions.

Over the years I have discovered that bacteria and candida yeast are not the only organisms that can dominate the vulva and urethra. There are others. I don’t know if the others show up on the common tests. I think the common tests test for specific organisms, rather than taking a picture and manually identifying each species found, so some can go undetected unless they are specifically tested for. Google ‘vaginitis’ to find out about them.

Rosebud, as you are still nursing your vagina may be kind of like a perimenopausal woman, ie not really plumped up, and easily irritated. It may also be not the ideal pH (guessing here). Have you been tested for candida? A vaginal moisturiser like Replens, or a simple water-based lubricant or vitamin E cream may help your vagina and vulva to be more resilient.

Hope the new bike seat will take the pressure off your vulva. Simple vaginal and vulval friction with non- optimum microflora and pH balance could compound the problem. I would suggest that you put as little pressure on your vagina and vulva as possible for a couple of weeks. This means no penetrative sex, special seat for bike or just stop for a couple of weeks, lubricant or moisturiser, also an oral probiotic, and maybe a vaginal probiotic. You could also do a topical thrush treatment.
I would also suggest that you cut all simple carbohydrates and sugars, refined cereals, caffeine, processed foods, dairy food except yoghurt, and gluten out of your diet, or anything else that might be causing a dietary sensitivity. Ensure that you get lots of greens and other sources of calcium. Just wash your vulva with water and dry with a hair dryer. Put some vinegar in the rinse water for your knickers and towels. Just do this for two weeks only. It will drive you mad if you do it for too long. At the end of that time see if has made a difference. Add things back into your diet one by one, leaving gluten and dairy until last, monitoring each re-addtion. You might find that simply allowing your body to get back into balance will be enough to heal your vulva, urethra and vagina, if they are indeed a problem.

Do drink some more water. Breastfeeding will pull it out of you, and they reckon 2 litres per day is needed without breastfeeding. An exercise program will further increase your need for water. (Not tea, coffee, cocoa, juice, softdrinks, beer, wine - just H2O!) You may get a lot of that water through soft foods, but food often has salt which will further increase your need for water, and fibre , which will absorb water. Again, do it for two weeks and see what happens. More water should also make your stool softer so it is easier to empty or 're-shape' your bowel. Prunes may also help your bowel to keep moving. Mandarins or oranges (Caution on sugar for the next couple of weeks) will also help, particularly first thing in the morning. Warm water first thing also seems to stimulate the bowel. The other thing is that I personally find it difficult to drink enough water in cold seasons. I don't really ever feel thirsty. I used to have a big Nursing Mug that I would habitually fill with warm water each time I sat down to nurse my babies. Otherwise I am sure I wouldn't have had enough water and would have become constipated.

Try and get some inversion exercises happening, whether they be hip hingeing (deep forward bends from the hips), firebreathing, nauli or whatever. This will help reposition your organs and suck your large intestine out from under your sacrum and into the abdominal cavity where it belongs. This will reduce the crowding in your pelvic cavity and keep your vagina at the right angle. Remember to allow your belly to relax forwards so there is a safe place for your bladder and uterus to rest, away from the top of your vagina.

Back pain can stiffen your back, which makes it almost impossible to get into WW posture, but WW posture is what your body needs to deal with the back pain. Therefore, I think you will need the multi-pronged approach that I have detailed above, to get your organs back to where they belong and improve the health of your vulva.

It is one body, not a collection of parts. They all affect each other.

Louise

Hi Rosebud. Very tired. It is late here. Sorry I got so much wrong. Will review it all again when I get through the next couple of days. You go do some homework. I will sleep. Work tomorrow then a busy Friday. Catch up on the weekend, and I will have another try at getting the facts right.

Louise

First of all, we need to be very careful about trying to diagnose anyone’s particular condition. Rosebud, whatever you have going on is complicated. It seems especially complicated by the mixed messages you've received from your doctors and there is no way for us to sort those out.

The Whole Woman work is about aligning the load bearing joints of the body - the SIJs and the hip joints - directly over one another so gravity stabilizes them against shear and bending forces.

This is done by lifting both the chest (up through the crown of the head) and the tailbone.

When the psoas muscles are fully elongated (lumbar curve fully in place), ligaments surrounding the hip joint twist upon themselves, pushing the femoral head into the acetabulum of the pelvis. Hips and lower back become very strong and stable and you develop your anterior glutes - medius and minimus.

When you simply stick your butt out - or pull your thighs back, or place most of your weight on your heels - it is your iliacus (lower portion of the iliopsoas) that are contracting instead of the psoas lengthening to extend your shoulder girdle. This is a very important distinction. Whole Woman posture is a head-to-toe training of the body to hold this extended shape.

Do all the ab work you want, but be mindful that your breath must move into your lower belly to stabilize your organs. If your abs are overly developed and your body is what I call “wrapped around spinal flexion” (i.e. rounded shoulders, pulled in abdominal wall) your pelvic organ support system is being compromised. A young woman who has never given birth might think this is just great, but older women are much better able to sense the difference in organ support when doing “core strengthening” sorts of exercises.

In Whole Whole posture, the rectus muscles lengthen while the transverse muscles shorten. This shortening is very slight - but enough to significantly stabilize the pelvis.

The whole thing hinges on pulling your belly up - not in - by relaxing and pulling up through the back of your neck and crown of your head.

Louise - do those sorts of vertical knee raises if you feel the need. I like my simple mat program, the basic baton exercises from the book and dvd, plus walking and biking. I feel healthy and strong and don’t aspire to much more physically. There is too much other work to be done!

:) Christine