Having a UTI is like having a screaming baby.
The ‘ baby ‘ is your spasming leg. For me it’s my right leg and the muscle that spasms is in my right shin. That’s the one that pulls your toes up to your knee.
It fires repeatedly. Sometimes every few seconds, sometimes like gunfire. That muscle spasm tho is so violent it doesn’t just pull my toes up, it moves my whole leg, sometimes as in my leg lifts up and crashes down again.
Lying down it’s most noticeable. It lifts off the bed and crashes down again, repeatedly.
If I grab my foot, my hand isn’t anywhere strong enough to stop the spasm going completely. The spasm is far stronger than my grip. And my grip strength is pretty good to say the least.

Like a Baby the leg can be calmed by rocking it, stroking it, moving it.
The moment I stop, like an hysterical baby, within a few seconds it fires again. Like a baby at full scream, it violently spasms. And again, and again, until I calm it ( to a degree ).
At 4 am, after say 5 hours of doing that, when I’m extremely tired/ pissed off/ desperately wanting sleep, after nights of the same pattern, all night long, yes I’m desperate for the ‘ baby ‘ to stop. That’s the moment sometimes even the most devoted parents can even harm the child.

I just want my fing leg cut off. I resent it and despise it. The leg is no use to me at all, yet is now responsible for tormenting me.

Last night I did sleep briefly. I woke confused. I’d been a soldier and I kept being given a target to achieve. I think I was a captive and was being told that if I did this thing successfully I’d be set free. I’d complete the near impossible task and be near release, and then I’d be told to complete something else almost impossible and if I did I’d be released. I’d do the task, then be told again to do something else.

The dream was a metaphor for my life. If I have this operation I’ll achieve an improvement. I had the operation, got to ‘ my target expecting release’ and then I realise no, it was a false hope and in fact the target wasn’t the cure for the symptom, it was a target that actually was a fruitless false hope that in fact had made no difference, just given me optimism for something that actually isn’t going to help me.

I woke in despair. The operation had in fact made my spasms far worse than before, and not better as I had been convinced it would.

Well thank God I now realise that these particular spasms were down to a UTI, rather than a ‘ botched operation that actually made everything worse’.

I couldn’t live much longer in this kind of repeating nightmare, desperately tired yet dreading lying down ( when the spasms would get far far worse )

That’s how it’s been for 5 nights in a row.
I’m hoping tonight I get to sleep….