Inability to take crucial medications due to emetophobia

Hey everyone, exhausted 22 year old with OCD here. My OCD has always been draining, especially around anything regarding sickness or nausea thanks to my crippling emetophobia, but lately it’s been unimaginably worse.

Two weeks ago I was diagnosed with a UTI which I was put on antibiotics for. No big deal, right? Take the medicine and everything will be fine. They’re antibiotics and they’re there to help, not make you sick. Yeah, not in my mind apparently. As soon as I got home before I event took any I started rampantly googling all possible instances of people experiencing nausea or vomiting while on them and what do you know, an incredibly rare side effect people have reported experiencing is uncontrollable vomiting. Great. Now I can’t take the medication because if I do surely I’ll be part of that 0.5% vomit and then I will die because I threw up.

So… I didn’t take the medication. Instead I went back to urgent care the next day and lied saying I took one and it made me not feel well, and that I needed a different antibiotic. They provided me with a different course of antibiotics and you’ll never guess what I did when I got home. Yep. Google. Found one singular Reddit post about someone experiencing nausea while on them and decided I couldn’t take those either.

Fast forward a week and a half, I’m in agony. I reluctantly go back to urgent care. It’s now bordering between the start of a potential kidney infection and a very, very bad UTI. They asked if I took the antibiotics.. I said yes. I haven’t even opened the second bottle. They gave me ANOTHER course of super strong antibiotics today and advised me to go to the emergency room if it gets any worse. I’ve managed to restrain myself from googling the medication, but the ‘take with food’ label on the prescription packed is terrifying me and I genuinely don’t know if I can bring myself to take the pills. I’m so scared that if I do they’re going to make me nauseous and I’m going to throw up, but I’m in so. much. pain. Yet somehow despite it I’d still much rather be in pain than risk taking the pills and vomiting. I’m scared the infection is going to get worse, and I’m scared the antibiotics are going to make me sick. I don’t know what to do.