Rowan
Rowan began experiencing chronic urinary tract infections (UTIs) in her teens, which became more constant after marriage and children. Breast cancer treatment in her early 40s caused her to need near “constant” antibiotic treatment. She has found recent success in using D-Mannose.
Rowan is a retired secondary school head teacher. She lives with her husband and has 2 grown up children. Rowan describes herself as White Welsh.
Condition: chronic UTI
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Rowan has been experiencing chronic urinary tract infections (UTIs) since her late teenage years, when a UTI led into a kidney infection. After the first infection, UTIs became “more and more regular” in her life, particularly during marriage and after having children. These infections were often debilitating, as they would “knock you sideways for 48 hours”. Rowan tried solutions like potassium citrate, bicarbonate, and hot baths, but found that none of these helped.
At the end of her 30’s, Rowan was diagnosed with breast cancer. The chemotherapy she underwent resulted in damage to her bladder tissue, which intensified her UTIs post-cancer treatment. Rowan found that she needed “constant antibiotics” to manage her UTIs. She received “varying amounts of sympathy” from doctors, some of whom dismissed her recurrent UTIs as a minor concern.
A few years ago, Rowan went in to see a new GP about UTI related pain. The GP was “very concerned” and quickly referred her onto a urologist. Rowan found the GP’s sense of urgency “a bit worrying really”. The urologist ruled out cancer but informed Rowan of the damage to her bladder from chemotherapy. Based on Rowan’s history with cancer, standard hormonal treatments were ruled out. Instead, he recommended she try D-Mannose, a non-prescription fruit sugar which he had heard anecdotal support for. The doctor stressed that “I don’t normally do this”, but that it may suit Rowan’s particular situation.
Since starting D-Mannose two years ago, Rowan hasn’t had any UTIs. If she does feel a UTI coming on, she takes additional tablets and finds that this resolves the issue. Rowan is relieved to be past “40 years of that pain and horribleness”, where UTIs were “lurking in the background” of daily life.
During her years of struggling with recurrent UTIs, Rowan found that it kept her from activities and impacted her relationships. Her work as a teacher was made more difficult by being anxious about when she would be able to go to the loo next. The looming fear of yet another UTI kept her from activities like joining a walking group or going camping with her family. Chronic UTIs also had a negative effect on her married life, as she worried that sex would cause another UTI.
Rowan hopes that in the future conditions like chronic UTIs won’t be dismissed as “it’s a women’s problem”. She tries to be open about her own experience when talking with friends and family and has discovered that several people in her life have had similar struggles. Rowan feels that younger people are much more open to talking about urinary health in comparison to her and her mother’s generations. While there is a lot of information available on the internet, Rowan tries to avoid this as it can make her “very, very anxious”.
Rowan wants to encourage women to seek out others who will listen and be empathetic. She feels that it is “crucial” to build a relationship with a caring GP but recognises that this can be difficult with under-staffing and budget cuts to the NHS. Rowan encourages people to be “a bit more sympathetic to your GP” as she thinks they do not receive enough appreciation. In terms of improving health services, Rowan would like to see the creation of designated UTI nurses and support groups for women with urinary conditions. She hopes that doctors will be more inclined to recognise that people have experience of their own health when patients present with a chronic condition.
Rowan’s urogynaecologist recommended she try D-mannose, which has worked really well for her.
Rowan’s urogynaecologist recommended she try D-mannose, which has worked really well for her.
Anyway, so I trundled along and this consultant urologist, male was just brilliant. Made me feel very comfortable, did all the, all the looking at because obviously knows that I’d got bladder cancer but in fact he said, “You haven’t got bladder cancer, everything’s okay but because you had chemotherapy so early on it really has affected the lining of your bladder and all the and the tubes going into your bladder,” and he said, “What I’m going to tell you to do now is not something that what I would tell people because I’ve had, he wanted to, he suggested first that I had this a hormone thing to put inside me but then he said, “Well you can’t really have that even though you’ve had breast cancer a long time ago, I wouldn’t recommend it. What I’m going to tell you to do is something that a friend of mine regularly tells ladies to do is to take a fruit sugar called D-mannose which is really-” I, “Pardon?” Anyway, so he said, “I don’t normally do this, but I think it actually might help you.”
So, I thought, ‘okay’ so I have to track that down. So Holland and Barrett sell it which is very good and you get it online and he said, “Take as much of it as you like just to see if your symptoms will settle down.” So, I started taking this and some bio stuff for my tummy to try and neutralise the acid in my tummy as well and I started taking it and I didn’t have a UTI then for six months after I’d been on antibiotics every two or three weeks so I thought, ‘oh okay’ so I kept taking it. Then I didn’t have another one for another six months. I thought, ‘oh maybe it’s stopped, it’s stopped, it’s working.’ Anyway, it’s now two years, actually two years I haven’t had a UTI, and I’ve actually recommended this to obviously female friends who’ve had constant UTIs but also to a male friend who was really, really poorly with his bladder and it’s worked in various ways for all of them including this the male friend who was having problems.
So, I can’t believe that GPs don’t know about this stuff when it’s non-invasive, it’s a fruit sugar and it’s not an antibiotic so it’s not going to lower your ability, you know, to take on antibiotics and make your immune system struggle. I don’t know if I’m phrasing this properly really but anyway so that’s my story really after, after 40 years of that pain and horribleness, I now have had two years of, of no pain, no horribleness. If I feel that I’m getting a UTI I just take more tablets and it, and it goes away.
It was difficult for Rowan to tell her mum, who was born in the 1920s, about her first UTI.
It was difficult for Rowan to tell her mum, who was born in the 1920s, about her first UTI.
Yeah, I think it was women born in the 50s, we weren’t encouraged to talk about that sort of thing I feel. Certainly, my mother didn’t like talking about things like that. She was highly embarrassed when I got my first one at 17 and she was talking to her, her sister who had been a nurse, she was a retired nurse and then I got all this rubbish about what was going to happen to me, about, you know, “Oh, you’ll have to have this, and you’ll have to have that.” They had no clue what they were talking about, but they didn’t want be, talk about it anyway because it was embarrassing, it was a female thing because they’d been born in the 20s so they really didn’t talk about things like that.