“The impact goes far beyond what people understand – we’re talking about pain, urgency, sleepless nights and missing out on your life,” Adrianne tells her roughly 8,000 followers in a video on TikTok.
For nearly five years, Adrianne has lived with a chronic urinary tract infection (UTI) – a condition it took her two years to get a diagnosis for.
In that time she was wrongly told it was colon cancer, Crohn’s disease or even that her partner must have been cheating and had given her a sexually transmitted infection.
What started as one UTI in 2022 became a debilitating cycle.
“It has completely stripped me of everything: being able to work properly, my relationships, my friendships, going out, being able to have a normal social life,” says Adrianne, who works in digital marketing in London.
The 29-year-old was eventually diagnosed privately with a chronic UTI – something experts estimate could affect up to 1.7 million women in the UK, external. Men and children are also affected.
Adrianne is not alone in sharing her story and coping mechanisms on social media to fight the stigma surrounding UTIs.
A quick search on Tiktok or Instagram shows hundreds of posts of women of all ages talking about the reality of living with recurrent and chronic UTIs.
“I felt incredibly nervous to put myself out there, but there’s now this community of people who can share tips with each other, and understand each other,” said Adrianne, saying her posts have had a “really positive response”.
“It’s very validating.”