This is a rather long story so i'll be very thankfull to those who listen.

Around about three years ago now, just before I turned 15, I had sex for the first time and used a condom with a spermicidal lubricant. Unfortunatly from that I developed a fairly painfull uti. Not that i'm afraid of doctors or anything of the sort but I was terrified that if I headed around to the doctor with my mother they'd find out somehow that i'd had sex recently.. Ect... Ect. I'm well aware now that probably wouldn't have been the case at all but my mother and I have never had a very close relationship and unfortunatly her attitude to health problems has always been "ignore it and it will go away". So for both of the above reasons I never got seen to by a doctor and instead spent the following months drinking lots of water and cranberry juice and just prayed it would go away on it's own.

Six or seven months on I eventually gathered together the courage and the money to head around to the family gp by myself. He didn't ask many questions or even take a urine sample, I was just given a three day course of antibiotics and sent on my way.

The antibiotics cleared up every symptom I had suffered from (odd smelling uring, needing to pee frequently and passing very little urine despite ugency) except the stinging pain. Despite the fact it still stung quite badly after going to the bathroom, I decided I could live with it(mainly becuase of the cost, a €40 fee for seeing my gp was a lot of money for me to spend) and through trial and error, discovered things like coffee and acidy drinks made it worse.

The following year I ended up in hospital to get my appendix taken out. I gave a urine sample there which interestingly enough, showed up negative, something which I took to mean, that whatever reason I was in pain for, it wasn't an infection. The pain got a lot less after a left hospital, now it only ever stung when I passed water in the mornings, or without drinking a lot.

Anyway, rewind to around four weeks ago and the pain came back, exept this time as more of a sharp pain rather than a stinging one. Since this time around I was older, had more common sense and money at my disposal I took myself around to a different gp to get myself seen to. I told him the whole story and complained that not only had the pain I was experiancing changed but recently it felt like my bladder wasn't emptying itself properly either, and I was still going to the bathroom very frequently. He took a urine sample, told me I had an infection and I was given a five day course of ciproxin. He also decided to set me up with an appointment in a hospital, just because i've had this problem for such a long time.

Now that the course of ciproxin is finished i'm back to the way I was beforehand, occasional stinging pain, trouble empyting my bladder and frequent urination but the stabbing pain had cleared up as has the cloudy urine. I'm going back to my gp on friday to give him an update but while I was on the internet earlier on this week, by accident I stumbled across something called a "urinary stricture", which seems to match the symptoms I have, it even mentioned spraying urine or urine in two streams, which I wasn't even aware that was a problem, but something that also happens to me. I don't want to jump to any conclusions just yet but I will mention my worries to my gp this week.

After saying all that (thank you for reading first of all)i have a bundle of questions, such as what could I expect when I visit the hosital? Also, if I am suffering from a ureathral stricture, what treatment is available, and what is the recovery time like? Which leads me onto my last problem which is more of a personal issue, my mother unfortunatly still doesn't know about any of this, it's a story for another day as to why I wont tell her but at this stage i've dug too deep a hole to come clean and admit i've been going to doctors and making hospital appointments without her consent. If i'm going to need a full scale operation that would require a few days recovery time, i'm in big big trouble. Despite that, i'll be 18 in a few months, and living away from home a few months after, would it be possible to hold back any operation untill then?

Thanks very much.