My chronic UTI story started in November 2022. I used to get UTIs as a child but had never had one as an adult until this point. I believe the infection developed after I started seeing a new partner. When the symptoms came on I got some antibiotics from an online pharmacy; as is sadly typical nowadays, the prescription was only for three days’ worth of antibiotics, and after I had finished the course the symptoms were still there. I then booked an appointment with my GP, who said that my urine dipstick test was showing up as negative, so they could not give me any more antibiotics. They said I might be experiencing residual inflammation after the initial infection, but I knew that the infection was still there because my symptoms hadn’t changed at all from that first day. My main problem was, and continued to be throughout my journey, this feeling of urgency and pressure on my bladder that nearly drove me crazy. Given that the doctors clearly weren’t going to help me, I ended up going to A&E. After an eight hour wait and an overnight stay I was given some pain medication and sent home. What followed was six months of horrendous symptoms and desperation. No medical professional seemed to know what was wrong with me, so I turned to online forums to try and find out the problem. I started reading about chronic UTIs and thought that what people were describing was exactly what I was going through. At this point I was under the care of a private clinic in Norwich; after a positive dipstick test (the only positive infection test the whole time I was ill) and a week of antibiotics which did not reduce my symptoms at all, they encouraged me to go through with a cystoscopy and biopsy, and based on the results gave me a diagnosis of interstitial cystitis. This was in March 2023. I was referred to an NHS clinic for IC treatment, but there was a long waiting list. For the next three months or so, I tried to follow all the advice I saw online about reducing IC symptoms - every diet, tablet or supplement that someone had written about online, I tried. Nothing worked. Then, surprisingly, towards the end of July 2023 I realised my symptoms had virtually vanished. I had not thought about my bladder for several weeks and hoped and prayed that this was the last I would hear of the problem. 

Unfortunately this was not to be the case. On Christmas Eve in 2023, I started feeling that familiar urgency sensation again. I was devastated, and frantically rang NHS 111 to try and get some antibiotics in case it was an infection. As had been the case in the past, I was given a week of antibiotics and they did nothing to reduce my symptoms. I was back in that daily cycle of panic and terror that I would never get better again. It was hell every single day and not a feeling that I would wish on anyone. All I could think about was my bladder and when I was next going to be able to go the loo. The following month I started having severe panic attacks and tried to kill myself several times. I am very glad now that these attempts did not succeed, but at the time it felt like the only way out from this horrendous illness.

It was these events that led me to start treatment with the Portland hospital in April 2024. Whilst initially I had accepted the interstitial cystitis diagnosis given to me by the private clinic in Norwich, I was now starting to think that something else was at play, and I began doing some serious reading about chronic UTIs and treatment options for the condition. At my first appointment, and despite having very low white blood cell and epithelial cell counts, I was diagnosed with a chronic UTI. The treatment plan for Cefalexin for three months to start with, as well as hiprex twice a day if my bladder could manage it. I found out pretty quickly I could not tolerate hiprex at this point (it made my urgency 10x worse), but after two weeks on the Cefalexin I had one day where I had very few bladder symptoms. I knew I finally had the right diagnosis and had done the right thing by going to the Portland.

This is where things started to get a little complicated. Whilst the Cefalexin continued to work for my UTI - I still had symptoms the majority of the time, but also continued to have the odd better day here and there - it started off a string of vaginal problems including thrush, BV and a vaginal ecoli infection. I didn’t realise this at the time but all of these infections made my bladder symptoms much worse, so while the Cefalexin was helping the UTI, overall it didn’t feel like I was getting any better because my symptoms had intensified again. I was devastated, as I finally felt I had been getting somewhere with treatment. I was having a lot of unusual vaginal discharge and had an endless number of vaginal swabs done at the doctors as a result, all of which came back clear: no thrush, no BV, no infection. 

Once again I felt that things weren’t really adding up, and I decided to pay for a private vaginal swab from a company called digital microbiology. The results came back and it showed I had terrible BV and thrush infections. A nurse at my GP surgery put me on Fluconazole once a week, which got rid of the thrush, and I treated the BV using vaginal fluomizin tablets with lactic acid for 12 days, as advised by myvagina.com (an incredibly helpful website that has so much information about these conditions). Unfortunately, fluomizin not only kills BV and thrush but also the good bacteria (lactobacilli) that live in your vagina. With all these good bacteria gone there was nothing to keep the BV from coming back, and I fell into a cycle of treating the BV, only for it to come back a few days later. This period was another one of my lowest points in terms of both symptoms and my mental health. I was having terrible suicidal thoughts again and was struggling to get out of bed because the urgency was so bad every day. At this point I was doing a Master’s at Cambridge University, working three jobs, and living with my boyfriend (who I later broke up with), so it was a very stressful time. With regards to the ongoing UTI treatment, by now the Portland had recognised the vaginal problems and taken me off Cefalexin, advising me to try hiprex only for the time being. After two agonising weeks trying to get on hiprex, my bladder finally got used to it and I started to feel a little better. My symptoms were still terrible but they were at a point where I could at least function during the day.

It was at this point that I started reading more about good vaginal bacteria, and how having a high vaginal pH/depleted good bacteria levels could exacerbate or even cause bladder symptoms. I spent every night looking through Reddit posts about treatments that had helped other people with the same issue, and eventually came up with a plan to get my good bacteria up to their normal level. I used lactic acid gel every night along with a dissolvable vaginal capsule from myvagina.com filled with Crispatus powder from Bulk Probiotics. It took several weeks of daily use but I finally began to notice a reduction in my symptoms. I also drank a lot of kefir during this time, which I think helped somewhat as well.

This was in September 2025. At this point I also increased my hiprex to four times a day with vitamin C. I realised that I was now having days where my symptoms were at such a low level I wasn’t noticing them at all. I still had some UTI flare ups, but with four hiprex a day they went away within 48 hours.

My chronic UTI journey has been a long and painful one. I would not wish this horrifying illness on my worst enemy. But as my story shows, there is hope, and it is possible to recover with the right help and treatment. As of October 2025 I am still with the Portland, and probably will be for a little while yet until my symptoms have completely gone. But I have definitely reached a turning point with this illness, and even if it does come back one day, I will hopefully know exactly how to deal with it.