Recurrent UTIs
Hi everyone,
I’m looking for advice or shared experiences because I’ve been dealing with recurrent UTI/cystitis symptoms for about 2 years and it has really affected my quality of life and my ability to have sex with my husband.
My symptoms started around the time I first became sexually active with my husband about 2 years ago (I was a virgin back then). Since then, sex has been the biggest trigger. If I don’t have sex for a while, my symptoms calm down a lot. For example, I didn’t have sex from February until May and I was mostly okay. Then after vacation, we had sex again and my symptoms came back very badly. My urine became cloudy and strong-smelling, and I developed UTI symptoms again, bad enough that I had to go to urgent care.
Over the past 2 years, I’ve had multiple urine tests and cultures. Some have come back positive for E. coli, especially when my symptoms were at their worst. Other tests have been negative, especially after I had already taken antibiotics. I’ve had a pelvic MRI and cystoscopy, and both were normal/negative.
Recently, after the flare in May, urgent care gave me a 5-day course of nitrofurantoin/Macrobid. After finishing it, symptoms came back again, so I went back to urgent care and was given Macrobid for 10 days. Right now, I still sometimes feel mild pain when I pee, but it is bearable. My main fear is that if I have sex again, it will trigger another UTI/culture/urgent care cycle.
I saw a urology NP recently and she suggested cranberry, D-mannose, hydration, pelvic floor therapy, and taking cephalexin after sex as prophylaxis. I understand that post-sex antibiotics may help, but I’m worried because I can’t imagine relying on antibiotics forever, especially because I want to get pregnant at some point.
I have had MRI, cystoscopy tests done and they were all negative. I was also checked for STIs , yeast infections and even ureoplasma everything came back negative. I don't even know what else to think of.
Did Hiprex/methenamine hippurate help anyone with sex-triggered UTIs?
I’m not looking for a diagnosis from Reddit, but I would really appreciate hearing from anyone who had a similar pattern — especially symptoms that started after becoming sexually active and were strongly triggered by sex.
This has been emotionally exhausting and has made intimacy feel scary because I’m afraid every time we have sex I’ll end up with another UTI.