Strange symptoms

skibunnie2

Hi, I have been having some unusual symptoms lately and would love some advice! 

I'm 17 weeks, first pregnancy. I'm also (still) recovering from long covid and starting back at work seems to have aggravated those symptoms a bit. The main ones are fatigue and headache. 

A few days ago I noticed cloudy urine, a different smell, and slight pain when urinating. I've had a lot of utis in the past so went to the doctor. I had trace proteins but no blood. He gave me a prescription for antibiotics but recommended holding off taking them to see if symptoms got worse as he wasn't sure I had a UTI. The smell got worse and it felt hard to pee so I started taking them last night. No change in symptoms yet.

I have had a pretty intense headache, worse in the mornings, for 4 days. Since covid I have pretty much always had a headache but it's worse now. 

Last night I woke up feeling breathless. When I inhaled deeply it made me cough. This morning my lungs still feel tight. This is new. 

I can't get in to see a doctor today. I have a prenatal appointment for Tuesday. Should I wait it out? Go to the ER? What would you do?

Thank you 😊

fertile-turtle

TL;DR: I wouldn’t sit on these symptoms, even when not pregnant. I’d be seeing at least an urgent care today if possible.

Did they do a urine culture? If not, that was a huge mistake on their part, and you should absolutely go to a doctor (urgent care is probably fine for the potential UTI, but headache and shortness of breath is a maybe ER, and at worst, the urgent care will send you to the ER if they think you need it) because UTIs are nothing to play with, especially during pregnancy. You also absolutely want a culture to make sure you’re on the right antibiotic - you can end up with a kidney infection, and that’s pretty awful even if you aren’t pregnant. The headache and the breathlessness are concerning, too, and there’s a possibility of things like preeclampsia (although it’s early for that, Covid raises your risk) that could tie them all together and be very serious. You could also be developing something like diabetes very early - Covid has also been linked to Type1 diabetes in children, and diabetes also causes urinary changes.

Your doctor also probably has a nurses line you can call for advice like this. But from my experience with (non-pregnant) UTIs and pyelonephritis, don’t wait til Tuesday. And whatever you decide to do, if you spike a fever, develop back pain, starting peeing visible blood, can’t pee, notice swelling of your face/hands/feet, have vision changes, chest pain, pelvic pain or pressure, go to an ER right away. These are symptoms of a full blown kidney infection or serious blood pressure problems, and you don’t want to sit on those.

skibunnie2

Thank you so much for your detailed answers. Just to add, I had covid in January and my lingering symptoms are still from that. I live in a very small town and the options here are the one medical clinic which has no appointments left today and will be closed over the weekend and Monday and the hospital ER that is open 24/7 and is staffed by the same doctors as the clinic. As far as I know, I've never had my urine cultured. I'm in Canada. They did send it for some sort of analysis because I can see the results in my health portal online. It doesn't say the type of bacteria, just that there was trace proteins and all of the other results (ph, blood, a few others) came back normal. 
I'm taking macrobid now and have taken it before without issue. 

My lungs feel a bit better now and so does my headache. I think I will wait and if any symptoms worsen I'll go to the ER. 

Thank you again ❤️

fertile-turtle

@skibunnie2 good luck! If your UTI symptoms don’t start going away, that’s also a good reason to hit the ER. Fortunately as a Canadian, the cost probably isn’t as big a deal as it is for us Americans. Long Covid has been terrible for a lot of people, and I hope we find better treatments soon so you can find some relief.

Culturing is for determining what kind of antibiotic is best for the infection you have. My previous kidney infection was from taking the wrong antibiotic and thinking it was treating my UTI, then developing a nasty fever and back pain and needing IV antibiotics. The problem isn’t that macrobid isn’t a good antibiotic, or is bad for you, or can’t be useful for UTIs, but that you can get an infection from resistant bacteria that can grow in spite of you taking the antibiotic. It’s generally been standard practice in the US in my experience, but other people may have had different experiences.