Finally emailed my doctor, but really nervous

@Gibbon Thank you. The only other thing I thought of was ten years ago I had a surgery and they accidentally nocked either my kidneys or ureter (tube leading from kidney to bladder)..after surgery the doc did a CT scan on me and saw my ureter was inflamed. They put in a stent but not long after it was removed. I looked up can a ureter get scar tissue and cause urinary symptoms and it can. Maybe I'll need another stent

@Baybreeze Accidentally NICKED. Not nocked

@Baybreeze well, my research says keep that on the list, but being it happened 10 years ago, it's not very likely. Another thing that showed up as an afterthought is the normal changes in women, if you know what I mean.

@beermeplease Thank you so much 🩷

@GoldnJulz Thank you. And I'm grateful there's been no pain or bloated in these months, is be even more nervous wondering if it's cancer. Hopefully it's something not too major, ty again 🌻

@Baybreeze Don't rely on the fact that you feel no pain. Some people do feel pain when they urinate with a UTI... others do not.

STBX had a serious UTI earlier this year that landed him in hospital for 5 days of IV antibiotics followed by three days of oral antibiotics.

His doctors stated that he'd had it for a while (months) for it to be as serious as it was. The weird thing is that he is currently in care - and, it still slipped through the net. He had been being checked regularly for UTI's because he couldn't yet stand to urinate. How it was missed to the point where he was so sick is anyone's guess.

He'd even taken one course of oral antibiotics to clear it and been cleared by the medical team tasked with providing medical care to residents at his facility.

@HootyTheNightOwl Is STBX Your husband or? He couldn't stand, you mean he was bedridden, did he have a catheter?

@Baybreeze He is my legal husband... but I've been more his carer for over 10 years at this point.

No, he is not bedridden, he broke his femur back in January and had to have a rod inserted into it. Since then, he has been rehabilitating and learning to walk again.

No, he didn't have a catheter, they had him peeing exclusively into urine bottles from a seated position. Many men are unable to fully empty their urethra when they urinate in this way and I had picked up on the fact that STBX was not fully emptying his urethra. I told both him and his carers that he needs to at least sit on the toilet to urinate because he's not fully emptying his urethra. I called out the UTI risk and told him to change his incontinence products more regularly because of this problem.

While he did bring in my changes, standing at the toilet to urinate (he could stand and walk using aids, so the two handrails by his toilet were perfect for that), it went down like a lead balloon with staff and I had to advise him to disregard their concerns because the risk of UTI was higher than any potential fall risk here. He felt confident in his ability to urinate while standing so I advised him to disregard.

Fortunately, since then, he has had no repeats of the UTI problem... which seems to support my observation all along. I know that they didn't implement further changes in his routine after his hospitalisation, so the only thing that changed was a massive reduction in how often he uses urine bottles over going to the toilet (he still uses the bottle at night, unfortunately - I can't get him to drop that, too).

@Gusman Thank you 🪻

@HijabaDabbaDoo Ty friend 🌺 I have such health anxiety about blood pressure checks, I put off issues sometimes 🙁 But I finally got a good reading at home ...so I'm glad I have that I can show them. I just hope I don't have cancer.