In a promising move forward for many sufferers, chronic UTIs have been recognised by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) as a distinct condition, validating the pain of many.
But the condition remains a huge symptom of the gender health gap, due to the higher proportion of women suffering from chronic UTIs. While bodies of all genders suffer from urinary tract infections, women get them up to 30 times more often than men do.
On top of this inequality, those that seek treatment are faced with ineffective testing and medical misogyny. The situation has been previously described as a “cultural normalisation of female pain”.
“UTI affects mainly females and as such is seen as a ‘female condition’ and is frequently dismissed as ‘hysteria’, ‘imagination’ or merely ‘malingering’,” Carolyn Andrew, director of patient advocacy group Chronic Urinary Tract Infection Campaign (CUTIC) tells GLAMOUR.
“Test results can show negative for many patients and current medical practice does not look further than the outdated, ineffective tests which are now over 70 years old.”
It’s been announced that we’ll soon be given more access to UTI treatment over the counter, without the need for a GP appointment, due to strain on the NHS. Also, the NICE review has acknowledged issues with testing, diagnosis and treatment of chronic UTIs. But we deserve more, and better.
GLAMOUR spoke to Sarah, who is in her late 30s but has been suffering from UTIs since childhood, and chronic infections for the last two years.
I have suffered from recurrent UTIs since I was 5 years old.
I remember as a child, my mum had got me ready for bed and I’d been complaining of tummy pain and my belly was very swollen. I also felt shivery and nauseous. I vividly remember going to the loo before bed and the pain was horrific: it burned like hell fire when I passed urine.
I was so young, it was incredibly hard to eloquently explain to my mum what was wrong, so all I could muster at this age was: “Mum I’ve had a hot wee and it really hurts.”
My condition eventually became chronic in June 2021 – for the first time in my life, my UTI symptoms did not respond to the antibiotic treatment, and I was plunged into a living dystopia of relentless agony and suffering.
The symptoms were endless, including shivering, fever, vomiting, deep internal pain that felt like someone scraping down an exposed nerve and pelvic pain that felt like I was prolapsing.
From the age of five, I have felt medical misogyny keenly in the way I’ve been treated for my UTIs. The first male doctor I visited with symptoms trivialised my condition and sent me away with a recommendation to drink lemon barley water and to use Canesten cream!
Obviously my symptoms did not subside, and I was back and forth to the doctors as a result. In the past, doctors have refused to give me antibiotics, claiming that the dipstick test was negative, despite me sobbing in agony and begging them to listen to my symptoms.
“I have experienced medical misogyny since I was five. The first male doctor I visited sent me away with a recommendation to drink lemon barley water and to use Canesten cream”
Edward Kass, the man that pioneered the dipstick test, told the NHS at the time that the test was not fit for purpose in detecting lower UTIs, yet his advice was not heeded. This is yet another form of medical misogyny at play – his advice is ignored because women’s health and pain do not matter.