BLADDER INFECTIONS: HOW TO FIND RELIEF

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Some women are allergic to sulfa drugs, and black females may develop serious anemic reactions to such medications, so be sure to discuss those possibilities with your doctor . . . he or she may want to prescribe ampicillin instead. Any of the drugs used to treat cystitis will relieve the pain quickly, but it's important to take the entire course of medication you receive, in order to completely destroy the bacterial strain. Remember, too, that antibiotics will kill not only the invaders in your bladder, but also other beneficial micro-organisms in your intestines. For that reason, it's a good idea to eat lots of yogurt (which replenishes the supply) while taking sulfa medication.

PROBLEMS WITH DOCTORS

Unfortunately, many women receive unsympathetic—or even hostile—reactions when asking their physicians for advice on how to treat urinary complaints, because some medical "experts" assume incorrectly that all UTI is sex-related . . . while others consider the patient's problem psychogenic. This is complicated by the fact that, in many cases, bacterial counts in the woman's urine specimen aren't high enough to be considered—by some standards—symptomatic of a bladder infection.

Then again, recent studies have indicated that recurrent UTI is often caused not by E. coli , but by Chlamydia, a micro-organism that doesn't even grow in urine cultures (and therefore can't be detected by standard UTI tests). Physicians who are unaware of the Chlamydia- cystitis link—and surprisingly, quite a few are—may believe the negative test instead of the woman and give her tranquilizers for her "imagined" symptoms. Therefore, if you know you have a bladder infection, don't accept a prescription for Valium. Instead, inquire whether your urine specimen contained white blood cells (which, of course, would indicate an infection) and suggest that Chlamydia might be the cause. The proper medication for such cases would be tetracycline or erythromycin.

THE ANATOMY CONNECTION

If you experience recurring UTI despite your best preventive efforts, you may have an anatomical problem in your urinary tract. This could be either an unusual stricture (or narrowing) of the urethra, or—more commonly—a condition called "vesico-ureteral reflux", in which the valves between the bladder and ureters don't close completely after the bladder contracts to release urine. As a result, bacteria-contaminated urine returns to the ureters, and drops back either into the bladder to cause another UTI or—worse yet—into the kidneys to cause a kidney infection. [EDITOR'S NOTE: Regular cystitis symptoms—when accompanied by high fever—usu ally indicate kidney injection. If you develop this potentially serious condition, see a doctor right away.] Physicians use a special X-ray—called an intravenous pyelogram, or IVP—to investigate structural problems in the urinary tract. If such irregularities are discovered, they can often be corrected surgically.

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