[lalazapa]

Just thought would come here since nobody in my family has this problem and am feeling remarkably isolated.

I thought there might (must) be people on here who have had similar discussions with urologists to me and I guess I just needed to some advice, I guess, or some information.

I have been getting recurrent (at least once a month, sometimes twice, typically always when I am on vacation for the entire holiday) UTIs for as long as I can remember. I used to self treat, and it seemed to work for the most part, but in the past three or four years it has got worse. It does not clear by itself and when I get antibiotics it might clear for a few days, a week, perhaps, but it undoubtedly comes back not so long later. It simply does not work, and so I looked up Intersistial Cystitis and thought “That sounds like me!”

My infections, using those dip test things at the doctor’s surgery, always came back positive for infection. Is this the case in IC also?

I just got married, and we are trying for a baby. It is, as you can imagine, impossible, so I recently had a referral from my GP to a urologist for investigation because I explained how depressing it was to get these infections and to be unable to start a family because of it.

I had ultrasound and X rays done and went to discuss the results yesterday. The doctor told me that the X ray came back fine for the most part, but the scans were a cause for concern. He said that I have one healthy kidney. The other, he says, has multiple scarring at the top and at the bottom there is “fullness” – it is larger at the base, a lot larger than the other one. When I asked him to explain what he meant by fullness he said “Full, like a large lady.” Then he started to ramble on and on and on and I basically did not get a word of it.

Fat? I have a fat kidney?

To be honest, the doctor was very difficult to understand. I do not quite understand what he was saying. He said that he is going to send me for a IVU in the next month and then we can discuss things from there.

Does anybody have any idea what he is talking about?

What does the fullness mean? What about the scarring?

Has anybody had any experience with such things?

[UroDoc]

Very unclear , scarring is usually due to infections perhaps when you were young. You may have a double collection system on that side, i.e. two ureters running from the kidney to the bladder. An IVP/IVU would answer that question