So many UTI's!!

curlykale

My LO has had many UTI's over the past 5mos. She has been hospitalized, many courses of antibiotics & now with the most recent one being put on the last antibiotics before IV antibiotics are given & that means hospitalized again. We push fluids, she doesn't like cranberry supplements (not sure if those even work) with every UTI comes with more confusion. What have you done for your LO who would get them as often as mine?

M1

Welcome to the forum. I guess my first question would be whether she's incontinent, and how you're handling her toileting hygiene. This is so difficult in women, the urethra is so short that it's an easy "trip" for the bacteria to get from the perineum to the bladder. Meticulous attention to keeping her clean and dry may or may not help. If she's still "continent" and managing her own hygiene, this may be a sign that she needs more help--but boy, I'm sure she might be resistant.

There is some evidence that cranberry supplements do help--if she won't take the supplements, would she drink cranberry juice? My partner likes cranberry lemonade, which isn't as concentrated and has sugar in it, but still. that raises another issue--if she's diabetic, that can be an additional risk factor, as can taking the diabetes drugs called SGLT2 inhibitors (Jardiance, Farxiga are common ones). They increase glucose in the urine and are therefore a magnet for bacteria and yeast.

Sometimes the docs will try putting someone on a suppressive course of antibiotics for three or six months. This may or may not help; sometimes all it does is make it more likely that the bacteria will develop resistnace to antibiotics. But if nothing else has worked, they may try this.

So sorry you're going through this. Part of how aggressive to be depends on her stage of dementia, too. My 98 year old grandmother died of an untreated UTI --by choice. But that's probably not where your wife is.

Ed1937

My wife also had a lot of UTIs. I used a product called TheraCran One. I also bought and installed a bidet. Between the two I was able to greatly reduce the number of UTIs she had. But cleanliness is a must to avoid them. My wife became incontinent, and when she would have a BM in her pants, I would get her in the shower to clean her up. It was often a fight, but had to be done.

When your wife was tested for UTIs, did they do a culture? I understand they are now using PCR testing to check for UTIs, and they are supposed to be better and faster than even a culture. It's important that they identify the infection through testing, because that will give them the best information for choosing the proper antibiotics. Using the wrong one could have little to no effect. I hope you can get a handle on this.