Good lord... I've had it for HOW LONG?

[scottbp]

Ok gang, I'm a newbie here, so bear with me. I went to the doctor with a bronchitis complaint. He prescribed Biaxin, so I took it for 7 days. It turned out to be what my Mom calls a "napalm antibiotic"; i.e. it killed everything including the good bacteria in my stomach, and next thing I knew, I'm running a fever and developed the worst case of diarrhea imaginable... This went on 5 days straight. Everything I ate or drank just passed right through undigested. I have diarrhea on a not too infrequent basis, but I never saw the doctor about it before, I figured either it was a seasonal "stomach flu" or that I just ate something bad and eventually got over it.

But this time, it was particularly bad, so I went to see the doctor and he ordered a stool sample, and the lab called the next day and told me I had a "bacterial intestinal infection", and phoned in a prescription for Flagyl to my pharmacy. That night, I looked up Flagyl on the net and saw where it is prescribed specifically for c. difficile, and eventually I found my way to this board, where I saw every symptom I had spelled out in the FAQs. I called the doc the next day, and they confirmed that it was indeed c. diff.

Then I read where people can have symptoms for months, even years. Good lord! I can't imagine going through what I considered to be a 5 day weekend of Hell for months on end! But the more I read about it, the more I'm now thinking that maybe I've been harboring c. diff for years and it occasionally "flares up". When I'm not having diarrhea, one of my complaints is that I regularly have a hard time eliminating. It's not exactly constipation, and not exactly diarrhea, but soft stool that is thick and sticky like peanut butter. Knee-jerk reaction would be to eat more fiber, but fiber only seems to make it worse. Could it be possible that my bouts of "peanut butter" are actually a low-grade infection of c. diff? (FWIW, I'm nearing 40 years old, and this has been going on for at least a decade.)

[Sheila1]

Hi Scott,

There are many things that can cause gastric issues, in fact, Christina just posted some very good sites to look up in the General Discussion section under "Useful Websites." Check them out, especially the last link.

Articles say it's possible to have mild cdiff for quite some time - until an antibiotic is taken. If you can research back to your last dose of antibiotic when you had no problems to this recent dose when you got sick, then you most likely picked up cdiff somewhere in your travels between the two doses. I had it for several months until I took an antibiotic but didn't know it until, like you, I took an antibiotic and ended up in the ER. I haven't been able to find any studies determining if one can go from a 'carrier' state to an 'active' state; the way medical articles are written in comparing the two in hospital environments, etc. it doesn't sound like it. The current status of one's own body (the host) has alot to do with the illness, severity, etc. etc. One indicator that many (but not all) have is "the smell," very distinct and peculiar to cdiff (which is how I know I had it several months before I got PMC).

It sounds like you've done alot of reading already. Be sure and check out Dr. Clifford McDonald's article and Dr. Borody's articles - they contain exxcellent information.

When the cdiff is under control you should investigate with a GI doc the previous years symptoms and be sure nothing else is going on.

I'm wondering the general area you're from? And about the doctors not naming the disease you had when they told you.... I don't suppose they mentioned hygiene, then, either, did they? Or that it is an infectious disease? (not contagious, but infectious). Be sure you check out the Hygiene section thoroughly, it's very important in order to prevent transmitting the disease to others or re-infecting yourself.

Most people are still 'cured' with one or two rounds of Flagyl or Vanocmycin - so take heart! You will get better!!

[scottbp]

Today the doc informed me that they found two things when they did the stool sample, not only did they find c. diff, but they also found a rotavirus, and it was actually the rotavirus that made me sick. The rotavirus is highly contagious and had been going around, a couple people at work had it before I did. In fact, one high school in the region where I live (southern Louisiana) was closed at noon today because 200 people came down with the stomach flu. At first they thought something they served in the cafeteria was the culprit, but people were getting sick who haven't eaten in the cafeteria.

He said it was probably the one-two punch of the antibiotic I was taking for bronchitis plus being hit with the rotavirus that allowed the c. diff to flourish, and had they not done the stool sample and found the c. diff, it could have developed into a more serious case of colitis.

One thing that I used to take that seemed to help the sticky stool was Kaopectate, which had kaolin (or attapulgite) clay as the active ingredient. The clay acted as an adsorbent, that is, it would bind the toxins that the bacteria produced to flush them out the body. (Supposedly this is what cholestyramine does also.) Recently, though, Kaopectate changed their formula to bismuth subsalicylate (which is the same ingredient in Pepto Bismol), due to concerns about trace amounts of lead in kaolin. Recently I tried bentonite, another adsorbent clay like kaolin, and it works wonders. I found the Yerba Prima/Great Plains brand of bentonite at Whole Foods.

[Sheila1]

scott,

I learn something new every day... I didn't know about lead traces in kaolin. Will check that out. While I suppose it's not an issue for the occasional user, could present problems for the regular user perhaps.

Talk about a double-whammy! My daughter's boss's wife got rotavirus a week or so ago and it was really bad - fortunately she said it only lasted a little over 24 hrs and 2 days later she felt perfectly fine. Sounds like you have a good doctor - and that's more than 1/2 the battle!

Hope you're feeling much better now