Can I just get antibiotics?

No, not unless you know the doctor and he or she knows that you have a history of UTIs. Meanwhile, drink cranberry juice.

Here in Spain, you can just walk in to the chemist and buy them without perscription, so you can maybe buy some online, but I strongly advise against it. You don’t want to mess around with antibiotics, they become less effective every time you use them, specially if you use them when they are not needed.

My advice would be to go to the doctor and have them prescribed if they are needed, else you will end up messing your self up, and when you really need antibiotics they just wont work for you anymore.

UTI can be caused by lots of things, the most common being viral. For that reason most (speaking in broad terms) are going to want to show your UTI is bacterial to give you antibiotics. The reason being a) they don’t do anything for viral UTI’s and b) taking them or not finishing them or taking them inapropriately can lead to them being less effective.

I used to frequently have UTIs so frequently-bacterial, that my Urologist put me on Macrobid as a prophalactic. (I probably didn’t spell that correctly!). I’m one of the biggest loudmouths I know about missuse of antibiotics, at first I had MAJOR problems, but after two more years of UTIs I gave in and said “sure”. I’ve not had any since then! (I also drink and love real cranberry juice.)

I agree with @poisonedantidote‘s advice to get the culture and the checkout, but I’m quite astonished that antibiotics are freely available without prescription anywhere in Europe. Diminishing effectiveness of antibiotics—because of indiscriminate overuse, misuse (not finishing a full prescribed course) and improper disposal—is a real and growing public health problem worldwide. It’s one of the few exceptions I have to my general policy to “legalize everything”. I think “recreational” drugs should be freely available for all, and antibiotics regulated by physicians and pharmacists.

It depends on your doctor. If he has prescribed it for you before, there is a good chance they will just call it in for you. I don’t think a culture is very expensive by the way.

Is there any other way to get rid of a UTI?? I remember a couple years ago I had one and it went away on it’s own.

It shouldn’t be expensive but just seeing a doctor is really expensive =\

It’s not that expensive. If you have a regular doctor who knows you he’ll probably give you meds for UTI without even coming in when you tell him your symptoms—he should anyway. If you are not in a good doctor/patient relationship with anyone, go to a doc in the box; they may give you antibiotics with just a CBC which is quick.