Relapse - need input

[seekingrelief]

I'm 64 years old and have a history of chronic prostatitis. A few years ago, I went through physical therapy with a therapist who specialized in pelvic floor pain. I had excellent results, and for 3 years I had few or no symptoms.

Unfortunately, recently I had a UTI, with blood in my urine, urinary/pelvic pain, and E. Coli showing up in my urine culture. My urologist put be on Bactrim for three weeks, I finished this course of antibiotics 8 days ago. Although it made me tired, Bactrim worked well at first, and within a week I was pretty much symptom free. My urologist wanted me to stay on Bactrim for 3 weeks since a prostate infection can take longer to treat.

During my third week of Bactrim therapy, I started having prostate pain. It has increased over the last week and includes urinary pain and just feeling run down. I've been off Bactrim for 8 days. I visited a primary care physician yesterday (Saturday), and he did a urinalysis. The initial results were "trace erythrocites" and "trace leucocytes", but everything else was normal. A urine culture is being done and I should have the results tomorrow. There is no visible blood in my urine.

I had a low grade fever yesterday morning (99.0 - 99.9), but otherwise have been fever-free. I've also had insomnia over the last few weeks, averaging about 4 hours a night of sleep. So i have been under some stress.

The primary care doctor I visited yesterday suggested that I start a 2 week course of the antibiotic cefuroxime. I'm reluctant to do that without seeing the results of the urine culture. There is a side of me that thinks this flare-up I'm having right now is non-bacterial, and was triggered by the UTI and the Bactrim. So I have not started the antibiotic. I plan to contact my urologist tomorrow (Monday) and get his opinion.

The thing that scares me a little is if this is truly a bacterial infection, then delaying the antibiotic could cause the infection to spread and become dangerous. Is this anything to be concerned about? Is my decision to hold off on the antibiotic reasonable for now?

Any comments are appreciated.

[webslave]

if this is truly a bacterial infection, then delaying the antibiotic could cause the infection to spread and become dangerous. Is this anything to be concerned about? Is my decision to hold off on the antibiotic reasonable for now?

Yes, it is reasonable. Your suspicion of a CPPS flare caused by the infection is most likely correct. Hold off for a week and see if it gets any worse. Try to calm down and lose the stress element too.

[seekingrelief]

Thanks for your comments, webslave. Much appreciated!