Tips and something else about bladder/urethral infections

Tip numero uno: pee before you empty your bag, alright? Seriously, dudes. Don't touch anywhere around your urethra--guys and gals both--if you just emptied and swabbed out the spout of your bag.
Feces residue--even if you can't see it--of ANY kind on your fingers when you touch your pee-place=BAD, INFECTION, UTI.

This can happen during sexual intercourse, if an object (penis probably) falls out of vag and crams back into anus or perineum briefly, or from nylon underpants, or something that slides back and forth on your perineum from anus to Venus--uhm, vagina. For girls especially, this can happen super easily, unforch. Trust.

And all that ranting I've done about injections to my spine and trying to find meds for my hurting urethra? Well I hate to be a proprietor of antibiotics, but macrobid, taken infrequently, but when I'm beginning to have pain there, has actually been the only thing to save me. The recurrent infections have ONLY been killed by this antibiotic, I hate to say. I really really hate to say. I have tried D-mannose

(a really helpful thing everyone should probably take in their water or juice every day), and I have tried Peridium, and Detrol LA, neurontin/gabbapentin, and all those spinal injections, and where has that gotten me? Shit nowhere. But painful sex, pain after urination, all that crap is nearly (knock on wooden head) gone because of the rare times I just pop a Macrobid. I guess many women have to take an antibiotic before or after sex in order to prevent having a urethral infection, if they have gotten UTI's in the past. This has literally been a lifesaver for me. I was always soaking in a sitz bath, crying from the pain until late at night, like 5 am, when I finally just fell asleep there. This was unbearable. Sometimes, this is still my reality. But it is SO MUCH LESS with an easy little prescription.

I'm having health probs in other regards, but seriously yo, heed this advice.  I hope those women suffering pain in their urethra, constant, for years, will be able to find this.

I am by no means pushing antibiotics on anyone. It breaks down your own immune-system's ability to handle stuff. But for urethral pain--don't FUCK AROUND.

Skin Erosion & Rashes

Jesus Christ. They just don't prepare you for this shit. One of the probs with having a loop ileo instead of an end is that the loop is a fat stupid motherfucker that creates a figure 8 that you can't cut wafers and such to fit exactly, so guess what? Your skin around it gets burned by the acids from your output. And my fucking surgeon had the gall to say "Meh--we'll just keep it a loop. Looks fine to me. Dar Dar Dar." Stupid son of a bitch.

I've had problems with stitches. Those supposedly dissolveable stitches never ever dissolve with me. I've always had to yank them out with a tweezers. Weeeeeee! When I had my large intestine resection (the big scar going down from my umbilicus) the stitches for that were crazy infected. I had to yank them shits out and it was like someone was disemboweling me---No, I REALLY felt that when the nurse was pulling out the drains. THAT was disembowelment. So my stitches around the stoma are red and puffy and the skin around that is rashy from the stupid adhesive.

Sorry for the gross largeness, but I thought it might help some hos out there who wonder wtf I'm talking about, or want to compare their infections with me. The white around the stoma, that shiny shit?--that's Desitin, a diaper rash cream that's actually hella useful for this type of thing, but also why you can't really see how bad the infection is, as the cream is covering it :/

My suggestion for helping skin erosion and aiding in healing rashes is this. On the weekend, stay the fuck inside. Take your bag the fuck off. Walk around with toilet paper around your stoma, secured with tape if need be, but I'm not a high out-putter and my output isn't liquidy, so I don't have too much probs with this. My reasoning for this is the rash and the infection needs to breaaaathe. The skin is sick of being imprisoned under strips of wax and adhesives and it yearns for the cool kiss of a summer brease upon its malformed infected face. Also, I wipe Destin on my eroding skin and use Aloe vera gelly on the rashy part, but Bacitracin Zinc Ointment USP is always a good choice. this isn't just me advising this. I've dug around through ostomy forums for this info, and this works.

As I still don't have too many bags to be using recklessly, I've only gone de-bagged twice, but I think I'm starting to see the difference in the overall healing and happiness levels of my epidermis.