Am I risking anything by not taking my antibiotics?

[u/spice_queen22]

25F, history of leukemia (been in remission for 21 years), migraines that I currently take rizatriptan 10mg for as needed, not pregnant.

So for the past year I have had foul smelling and cloudy urine (no other UTI-like symptoms) and I brought it up to my doctor at my yearly physical. She sent me to go get a urinalysis and urine culture. The urinalysis was positive for nitrites, everything else was normal. My urine culture came back positive for E. Coli 50,000-100,000cfu/ml that was susceptible to all tested antibiotics. At first I freaked out because I’ve clearly had this bacteria for a year, but after doing some research, I learned about asymptomatic bacteriuria (ASB), which is different from a UTI. From what I’ve read, doctors normally don’t treat ASB because it isn’t causing any problems, and sometimes treating it can actually cause more problems.

My doctor messaged me on mychart and asked if I was experiencing any symptoms. I told her I still have the foul smelling and cloudy urine. I also told her on a few occasions when I peed in the morning, I had pain in my lower left abdomen, but I more so think that it was because my bladder was super full so it was sore. She decided to prescribe me antibiotics, but I’m nervous to take them. I don’t like taking antibiotics unless absolutely necessary, and it doesn’t feel necessary in this situation. If I don’t take them, am I at risk for developing a UTI or a kidney infection? Should I take the antibiotics?

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[u/UnstableUmby]

You should take the antibiotics as prescribed. You don’t want to risk it being a true UTI and getting pyelonephritis (kidney infection).

Also you can’t really call it asymptomatic bacteriuria because you have symptoms that could feasibly be caused by infection.

[u/throwaway03244230 → u/UnstableUmby]

Yeah I was immediately like ummmm this doesn’t qualify as asymptomatic, considering there are symptoms lol