cdiffdiscuss.org

Hi, I just finished 10 days of Vacomycin and I feel terrible. My stomach and head are really hurting. Is this normal? I am taking probiotics suggested by my RD. I had C diff with constipation and my stools became loose with the use of Vacomycin. My doctor told me there is no point in retesting for 3 months. Is this real? I wont know if I am well for months? I have many other health issues and have been on liquids for 10 weeks. I am terrified because I am a graduate student and I was working with cancer patients when this happened to me.

3 months is not right; someone on here will know better than me. But I think it is 2-3 weeks?

Get a new Dr!
Solid stool should not be tested for c.diff.
Drs are not supposed to order a test and labs are supposed to reject a test on solid stool.
Reason is that c.diff can be a normal gut inhabitant and trying to eradicate it can actually create the environment it likes and cause it to become a disease.
After treatment a Dr is not supposed to test to see if it's gone but some Drs will wrongly test after 2 weeks even if theres no symptoms.
Drs that treat just because of the test result are not following the experts instructions.
Quite a few posters ended up with full on relapsing c.diff because their Dr treated them when they did not have D.

I am one that this has happened to. I was initially tested for cdiff when I mentioned that I had noticed a small amount of blood in my stool. This was after several courses of antibiotics for severe sinusitis as well as pneumonia. My stools were somewhat formed when I tested and it came back positive. I knew nothing of cdiff. The ENT doctor started me on Vanco. After the Vanco my symptoms got worse. I went to a primary care physician who then prescribed me Flagyl. A couple weeks afterward symptoms returned so he referred me to a GI who tested me and it came back positive. He prescribed Dificid. I went 4 weeks symptom free when it came back worse than ever! I am now on a Vanco taper awaiting an FMT. I wish so badly that I had not taken that first dose of Vanco. I didn’t have D at the time. Now I will never know if I would have really needed it, and I’m still fighting this beast.

The same thing happened to me, although I did have a lot of M and some B. But, I wish that I had never taken that first dose of vanco. My stools got much looser and the medication erradicated any stool smell, so I know it messed up my flora. I just had this medicinal type of odor which is not normal. After that it was one relapse after another and I finally wound up with FMT. The year before I treated I had a bout of it I am fairly positive, but I did not test and did not know what it was. I ate a lot of yogurt and it went away on its own. It did not re-surface until I took Cipro and got some D that came and went and then the M and B and was tested and treated with vanco.

If you get symptoms and your doctor won't test, go to an Urgent care. Unless you get D though, I would not test or treat.

All I can tell you is after testing positive for c-diff on PCR and having both toxin A and B, I was put on Flagyl. I was so constipated, I didn't go for five days! I was deadly sick because I feel the toxins just built up. I had chills, weakness, fever, so so sick. They assumed I didn't have it because of no diarrhea. Wrong! I relapsed after three weeks. This time going 18 times in one day. Needless to say I was hospitalized. On Vanco my stools we're always loose.

It's all very individual and hindsight is always 20/20. Had I known then what I know now, I would have waited to treat, but sometimes you have to treat. That is why it is important to go to a doctor who has had experience with CDI patients. You can't just treat on test results alone. You have to take symptoms into consideration as well.

For me Vanco usually firmed up the stool by the third day and it was kept firm until i started to taper it to 125 mg / 2 times per day , then stools were becoming loose and more frequent but not watery.
Why were you tested in the first place ? Because you were constipated? Have you had other symptoms along with the constipation , like abdominal pain , fever , trapped gas ?

Georgina, not to get off topic, but did things eventually firm back up on the taper, or did you have to go back up on the dose?

And Sherr, I am so sorry for your ordeal. I too had really odd symptoms that didn’t seem to be text book. Who knows, had I not gotten treatment early on, my situation may have been much worse.

No i wasn't increasing the dosage , i was just hanging in there and dealing with the looser stools (that was when i was taking 125 mg 3 times/day and two times/day). However when i got down to 125 mg / day i started to have WD and also tested positive and had to take the full dosage all over again.