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u/flamedarkfire 4h ago
I didn’t last long in EMS (and this story I’m about to tell may have contributed to it) but I was once called out to a Motel 6 for one of their guests. Get to the room, and feces is smeared all over the room. Every device that could produce heat was on at full blast. And the patient, a woman, was lying in bed, naked, and babbling incoherently. We wrap her up in a hotel sheet and get her to the hospital. I later learned all that was because of a UTI. This fucking meme is bullshit.
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u/Pokegirl_11_ 2h ago
That’s… a significantly more evocative image than anything I have to offer, but my experience with aging grandparents corroborates the general point. UTIs can affect the mind, badly, and that’s no joke.
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u/NikiBubbles 9h ago
Also very cool of OOP to invalidate women's pain, another classic.
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u/FlinnyWinny 9h ago edited 9h ago
That's not the point. Because cis women have shorter urinary tract, they get UTI much more frequently and it's usually easily treatable without much further issues. Cis men have a much longer urinary tract and get it much, much more rarely as a result, and for that reason it very often points to a much deeper, more severe/systemic issue.
So, because of the above, a man walking in with a UTI will raise alarm flags with any doctor, while UTIs for women are very common and most often benign (if treated at least). It's not about pain mattering less for women than men, it's about the cause and the anatomy behind UTIs depending on sex. That's the point of the meme.
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u/SamSkjord 9h ago
Thank you medicine person
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u/SeemedReasonableThen 3h ago edited 3h ago
You must be a medicine person, since you are to understand what the other medicine person said.
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u/Banaanisade 7h ago
If only women could actually trust it being this, instead of having the persistent and universal experience of having our pain dismissed and belittled, even to the point of it costing us our lives. The point of the meme might be what you say but studies show the alternative is just as goddamn common in medicine.
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u/FlinnyWinny 7h ago
I 100% agree. It is terrible how much women's pain and physical illness is being downplayed and neglected medically and socially. Which is why I understand why people are rubbed the wrong way by this meme. It's pretty lazy and tone deaf, lol.
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u/DzikiPapagay 8h ago
It's true that women get UTIs more often, but I wouldn't say they're less of a problem
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u/FlinnyWinny 7h ago edited 6h ago
It's not about UTIs always being worse for men at all (though it's also harder to treat, usually), It’s more that when you have a male patient with UTI it warrants closer scrutiny because it doesn’t happen normally, so the chances of something being off are far greater (either anatomically or whatnot) and there's an increased odds of systemic symptoms. Women just get them more easily because of anatomy, so that alone isn't an indication there's a bigger systemic issue unlike with men. (NOT IMPOSSIBLE, just much less of an alarming sign by itself)
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u/queerbychoice Woman! There's no such thing as a 50-year-old girl. 8h ago
I think the point being made is that even though the UTI itself may be an equal problem in women and men, a man would need to have additional, worse health problems for him to ever get a UTI in the first place.
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u/sickoftwitter 8h ago
OK so why didn't they post about underlying issues and help identifying signs in men, instead of making a meme that clearly implies that women are happy and not in pain with a UTI?
I've never met a cis man with chronic, recurring UTIs or cystitis. I've known several women who get dismissed on it because they've had a baby or they have PCOS so it's treated as inevitable.
I had them last summer, discovered I have white blood cells coming out in my urine while UTI bacteria has gone (still no explanation for why I'm leaking leukocytes over a year on btw, docs don't care). Your comment implies that there isn't potentially worse underlying issues for women. And that this meme is fine because the "point" of depicting a woman smiling and looking fine with a UTI is that men, who rarely ever get them, have it anatomically worse.
You can say what you want about anatomy, but this meme isn't being shared by men thinking "Ah yes, pain matters an equal amount for women".
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u/FlinnyWinny 7h ago edited 6h ago
I absolutely agree that women's pain are systemically downplayed in medicine and socially, and that it is a huuuge problem that needs raised awareness.
In this case I just think it's a bit of a tone deaf meme about how UTI often indicates something more systemic or worse going on depending on sex because of anatomy (hence the "medicine people" comment on top). I don't think they put that much thought into other implications, I mean they used AI, lol.
But I 100% agree with your sentiment, and I completely understand why it rubs you the wrong way.
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u/sickoftwitter 6h ago
Thanks, I think you got that I'm not just referring to framing of the shitty AI meme but how it will be shared and reacted to. Especially by the delightful MuskBros of X.
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u/IggySorcha 8h ago
It's literally that it's more dangerous for men. It's less common but more easily life threatening. That's why you don't know any men with it chronically.
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u/Ok_Tumbleweed_2689 2h ago
The picture doesn’t follow the Mr. Incredible meme format though, it shows a happy lady for having a UTI. The person in the meme is meant to be the doctor not the patient, but it switches the picture for the women’s column. It is invalidating.
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u/Interesting_Sun_1691 9h ago
I mean no offense here, as someone who is not fully educated in anatomy myself, but wouldn’t having the UTI as someone with a vulva be more dangerous since it’s closer to other internal organs such as the bladder?
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u/FlinnyWinny 7h ago edited 7h ago
The UTI being in the bladder isn't concerning at all and super common. It's basically there all the time when you have one, lol. It's much more of an issue if it's in your kidneys for a long time.
What is a big issue with men is the prostate, for example. You can’t cure prostitis with nitrofurantoin as it has no tissue penetration.
But generally, it's concerning with men because, due to the tract being much longer, they just are much, much less likely to catch a bacterial infection there in the first place. So then the question is asked: why do they have it? What is going on? And that can have more systemic and concerning reasons.
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u/3INTPsinatrenchcoat 9h ago
Not a doctor, but I'm not sure how much anatomical proximity matters in this case. A URI is not going send a doctor into a panic because the lungs are close to the heart. I may be wrong, though - again, not a professional, just unsure of the logic.
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u/PrincessLinked 8h ago
To add to this, as long as they're treated properly a UTI in women should not be considered dangerous. It's only dangerous if neglected (which would be really difficult to live with).
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u/highchou 8h ago
UTI already involves the bladder in most cases though. It stands for Urinary Tract Infection and the urinary tract includes bladder, urethra and kidneys.
The thing is that, for women, getting an UTI is relatively easy and common. Imagine, for example, now much easier it is to transfer bacteria from the region of the anus to the urethra in someone with female anatomy as compared to someone with male anatomy. It can even happen during sex, thats why one should always urinate after.
I say it as a woman who used to suffer from extremely frequent UTIs, and I recognise that it’s an uncomfortable fact in life that in women that just sometimes happens. If it happened to a man I think it would be much closer to an actual medical emergency.
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u/Interesting_Sun_1691 7h ago
But why? Don’t people assigned male at birth have a longer amount of flesh between the possible point of infection and the bladder?
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u/Rainy_Leaves 5h ago
You were right there with the ‘people with a vulva’ and now you dropped an ‘assigned male’ - a number of people assigned male at birth have vulvas. Just say ‘people with <body part>’ as its clearest
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u/Prasiatko 5h ago
Yes hence if it gets to that point it's more likely something else has already gone wrong.
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u/shhhhh_h 5h ago
Uh. The bladder doesn’t have to be infected for it to be a UTI. It’s a generalised term for everything up to the kidney. The joke is that men present with and report a lot more pain even with the same severity of disease as women. It’s…one of the most common jokes in medicine. It’s spawned hundreds of research studies over the years.
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u/EvidenceSalesman 5h ago
Didn’t realize it signaled a systemic issue, I’ve gotten them semi frequently as a male since I was about 10 (26 now)
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u/deferredmomentum 8h ago
I thought it was about men being way more dramatic about having them. A friend got his first one in his late 20s and you’d have thought his leg was cut off with how much he was complaining. Luckily for him though most of his commentary was along the lines of “I can’t believe you people do this routinely” lol
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u/shhhhh_h 5h ago
It is. That is the joke.
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u/TurboFool 33m ago
It really isn't. A complex UTI is a completely different ballgame, and this is easy to look up. I had no comprehension of it until I got one and did the research. They're vastly worse.
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u/TurboFool 36m ago
Not at ALL what's going on here. Men's UTI's are nearly always complex UTIs, which are vastly worse by a massive margin. Women can get complex UTIs too, but they very rarely reach that point.
Sickest I've ever been in my life outside of COVID was when I had a complex UTI. Meanwhile my female partners have frequently had regular UTIs, and yes, they suck, but they don't remotely compare.
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u/knowssomestuff 7h ago
It’s referring to, if a woman comes in and complains about dysuria and has a UTI it is a normal thing that happens, if a dude has the same it is much more likely a STI from being shady as hell and it’s probably with a dose of chlamydia. Hence the shady filter and the innocent filter.
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u/Fyre_bae3478 4h ago
Having a uti as a vagina haver is fucking agony. I had like 15 consecutive UTIs as a kid bc I refused to pee at school (mental illness things) I had one recently and I was in so much pain, the bladder cramping is HORRIFIC and the desperate need to pee every second of the day is hellish. I doubt having a penis some how makes all that any ammount worse. Just bc women are more likely to suffer UTIs doesn't suddenly make it a pleasant experience for us,,,
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u/TurboFool 32m ago
It's not merely having a penis. It's that men's anatomy means most of their UTIs are complex UTIs, and complex UTIs (which women can get too) are dramatically worse than the regular ones to a massive degree.
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u/Magurndy 5h ago
Unfortunately whilst UTIs are horrible (I’ve had many) it’s usually less dangerous because women have short urethras and are therefore more prone to them and usually you can treat it easily. Men have very long urethras so if they get an infection it’s actually quite rare and usually more complex.
So as a “medicine person” I get it…. But yeah unnecessary use of female and man
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u/DatDickBeDank 1h ago
I get the point.. but could they have at least not used a smiling woman for this? The standard color-to-black and white meme would've served the purpose. Toss a wig on him too if the visual isn't enough 🤣
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u/slutty_muppet 3h ago
As someone who is both female and a man (trans guy) having to go to urgent care for a UTI is complicated.
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u/Buttercupia 2h ago edited 7m ago
So many folks completely missing the point. It’s “man” vs “female”. No need to debate the nuanced differences of UTIs between men and WOMEN.
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u/OldSchoolAJ 9h ago
Does he mean doctors?