How to stop UTI's ?

[Rachy]

Hi all since Self Cathing i get allot of UTI's and no matter how hard i try i cant stop it happeninig.. ive been in hospital a few times with Kidney infections *ouch* any tips?

[fumbly]

Only advice I can give is watch your hygeine doing the procedure. I was not properly trained on this and initially got endless infections, introduced by the catheters.

Apart from obviously washing your hands, you need to thoroughly clean the area with a mild antiseptic, or even saline will do the job. If the catheter misses, as often happens in women, and touches the surrounding skin or goes into the vagina, then DO NOT INSERT IT. Throw it away and start again with a fresh one, while you are learning you may on bad days end up throwing away several catheters, so make sure you have plenty prescribed.

When you have finished catheterizing do not assume your bladder is empty, it may not be, remove it about half and inch and re-insert it, sometimes the flow will resume. Then, when you eventually remove it, if you are still able to urinate normally sit on the toilet and let any remaining come out, the catheter may have released the tension in the bladder enough for this to happen.

Everyone is different though. With me sometimes I have to catheterize more than once in a session. I do the first bout, try to empty my bladder further naturally, then catheterize again if I cannot and more comes out. But then my problem is my bladder goes into spasm, sometimes so bad I cannot even insert the catheter and it gets ejected powerfully.

Retained urine will lead to infection, but then trauma from poor catheterizing can too. Mistakes I have made - inserting the catheter too far in and scratching the bladder wall, inserting a catheter that is soiled from being just inserted into my vagina (an old nursing trick is to leave the one in the vagina where it is so the next catheter knows that is not the right orifice).

I've been doing this for over two years now, and it is as difficult and fiddly as ever. Patience is essential though, you are risking infection every time you miss out a stage in cleaning or insert a soiled catheter. Ultimately, this will damage your kidneys.

I used to use iodine to clean the area but it was very messy. Now I use chlorhexidine and it is much better, but if you have nothing else, just salt in water will clean the area well.

Good luck