Hello,
I have a major problem and maybe someone here has some advice.
For years and years (like 20 years), I have had ongoing UTIs and sometimes even kidney infections, which have been treated with
Antibiotics and then come back again later, only to be treated with
Antibiotics again. This all started with traumatic sexua| experiences as a teenager (rape, etc.), and I'm sure was made worse by bad lifestyle choices at that time, such as smoking, drinking alcohol and not eating right.
However, after my teenage years I cleaned up my act a lot, and stopped using any bad substances (cigarettes, drugs, alcohol, etc.) and even became vegetarian, started eating organic food, etc. Still the UTIs and kidney infections persisted and have always plagued me.
My lifestyle has just gotten more and more healthy over the years (though I'm no longer a vegetarian), and I really don't do anything that would harm the kidneys at all. The only thing I can think of is having sex with my boyfriend of many years, however we are both very clean and always drink water and pee after sex, etc. We are older now and conservative people, parents, etc., so this is not anything wild anyways.
I am 38 years old and still bothered by these things. I've done every natural thing imaginable, from chinese medicine to d-mannosse, to all the kidney herbs in a strong tincture and in teas, to collodial silver and iodine. In fact, I have spent so much time and money trying to treat my kidneys naturally that I have been almost ignoring a kidney infection for the last 2 years or so. I am just so sick of taking
Antibiotics and figure what is the point if it's just going to come back again anyways.
However I do realize that you should not let a kidney infection go this long, so I went into my naturopath who's also an MD the other day, and here is where the story gets weird:
She prescribed me an
Antibiotic called Cipro, which I went and got at a pharmacy. AFTER swallowing the first pill, I got on the internet and started reading about Cipro. It sounds like it is a terribly toxic drug, and people are saying that it ruined their lives. It also contains fluoride, a potent poison. After reading this info I freaked out and had a panic attack (I normally never take any drugs whatsoever, and drugs are very scary to me) and I did something really stupid. I tried to make myself throw up the Cipro pill by drinking a huge amount of salt water (something I read you could do on the internet). Unfortunately I didn't throw up much at all, and so I ended up with a large amount of salt (like almost 4 tablespoons of salt) in my system, and of course salt is very hard on the kidneys. Dumb, dumb, dumb, I know!
The next few days were hell, I was swollen with water retention, had lots of pain in both my kidneys which hurt whenever I moved my body, and could eat nothing but fruit. This happened last Friday, and I still cannot eat anything with salt on it, so I'm eating very little even now.
Anyways, I don't know what to do now. I still need to do something about the kidney infection, but I'm scared to take Cipro. My doctor won't prescribe anything else. I'm afraid I've further damaged my kidneys with the salt. Ugh. I made an appointment with another doctor for a second opinion, but that's not until next week, and they may just want me to take the Cipro anyways. Any advice?