Cipro and Flagyl

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poppy86
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Cipro and Flagyl

Postby poppy86 » Wed Feb 03, 2021 11:31 pm

Hi all, it's me again. My husband has Crohn's disease, with a severe perianal disease presentation. He had a fistulizing perianal abscess that required surgery last spring, and now he has one again. This time the abscess hasn't progressed as far yet, and the doctor (colorectal surgeon) wants to try treating with antibiotics. He will be having an MRI on Friday, and depending on the results of that he will have surgery. Perianal abscess is very serious and needs to be treated.

So he was prescribed Ciprofloxacin (500mg twice a day) and Flagyl, three times a day but I forgot dosage, both of them for ten days. I looked up Cipro, and apparently it's a fluoroquinolone, which is higher risk for cdiff. So now I'm terrified he will get cdiff. Does anyone have any info about Cipro? What to do to decrease chance of cdiff?

He can't take Florastor, due to Crohn's he has frequent intestinal bleeding (despite being on an immunosuppressant medication, Stelara). I'm hesitant to start giving him all sorts of probiotics because who knows what they will do to him. So I guess I just need to pray.

beth22
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Re: Cipro and Flagyl

Postby beth22 » Thu Feb 04, 2021 2:04 am

Cipro is what gave me c difficile and it is definitely a strong antibiotic. You don't really have much choice here with the condition that he has. If he is able to tolerate kefir or yogurt, he could take those rather than probiotics.

poppy86
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Re: Cipro and Flagyl

Postby poppy86 » Thu Feb 04, 2021 2:37 pm

Thank you for your reply Beth. I have some probiotic yogurt (Stonyfield Farm), so I'll try to get him to eat some, he hates yogurt. But this seems like the time to eat it. I don't know if he'll be willing to drink kefir.

beth22
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Re: Cipro and Flagyl

Postby beth22 » Fri Feb 05, 2021 2:24 am

Kefir comes in fruit flavors and you could mix some fruit into it and blend it and tell him it is like a fruit smoothie. Maybe he will try it.

LHutz
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Re: Cipro and Flagyl

Postby LHutz » Fri Feb 05, 2021 8:18 pm

Even putting aside the risk of c. diff, fluoroquinolones can be a very dangerous antibiotic. Allergic reactions to it can be quite severe. Look up fluoroquinolone toxicity. There's a black box warning on them. The FDA has issued guidance that essentially says that fluoroquinolones should be used only when there are no other options available because it poses a significant risk of causing ruptured tendons and the ruptures in the aorta blood vessel.

https://www.fda.gov/drugs/drug-safety-a ... ntibiotics

I took cipro more than 10 years ago and it caused pain in my achilles tendon and my doctor ordered me to immediately stop taking it and to never take another fluoroquinolone again. If I continued taking it my achilles tendon may have ruptured. I now have tendonitis in my achilles tendon, but I got lucky that my tendon didn't rupture. At the time I was a healthy and in my late 20s.

georgina
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Re: Cipro and Flagyl

Postby georgina » Sat Feb 06, 2021 10:09 am

You should check out Megasporebiotic , it's the best probiotic i've EVER tried so far (for my issues) but i also heard good reviews form people with IBD that are using it with success . Worth looking into it!

Ril
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Re: Cipro and Flagyl

Postby Ril » Sat Feb 06, 2021 10:30 pm

LHutz, I know you are trying to be helpful but there is a difference between therapeutic dosages and medication toxicity.
Her husband is in a critical situation and the surgeon has to make a decision about most effective medication for his condition.
They will have to give informed consent for everything. Fluoroquinolones have not been taken off the market and are one of many classes of drugs with black box warnings. One can hope that drs take these risks into consideration when selecting medications.
Perhaps a c diff support site is not the place to add more worry.

poppy86
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Re: Cipro and Flagyl

Postby poppy86 » Sun Feb 07, 2021 12:43 pm

Thank you for your relies Beth, LHutz, Georgina, and Ril. I bought some kefir in strawberry flavor, and so far my husband has barely been able to get it down. He has a hard time with yogurt too, but the yogurt is a little better. He has a pretty strong aversion to this kind of thing unfortunately.

I looked up Megasporebiotic and maybe he will try that. I feel in a state of paralysis about giving him more things to try. The antibiotics are packing a punch, he's feeling nauseated, and he has some diarrhea. I hope it's just regular antibiotic-induced diarrhea and not cdiff. At this point I don't know what to think. Now I'm afraid of tendon rupture. I don't trust doctors at all, when I was sick with cdiff after taking Clindamycin my primary care doctor blew me off for days before I demanded a stool test, which came back positive for cdiff. I don't trust their judgment at this point.

He has surgery scheduled for this coming Friday to drain the abscess. I wish they had just taken care of it when he went in last week and skipped the antibiotics. He's going to call the doctor tomorrow and see if he should continue with the Cipro or not. The meds seem to have stopped the infection from worsening, but it's not getting better yet, he's still in a lot of pain, just not excruciating. He has some pain medication but doesn't want to take it because he wants to be aware of how severe the abscess is, and pain meds would mask it.

So it has been a rough week for us here.

poppy86
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Re: Cipro and Flagyl

Postby poppy86 » Mon Feb 15, 2021 8:20 pm

I'm back to update. So my husband stopped taking the Cipro last Wednesday. His surgery on Friday went okay, he's in some pain now but managing with Tylenol. The colorectal surgeon told him to keep taking Flagyl 500mg twice a day. Unfortunately, for the past three days, after returning home from surgery, he has been having some urgency and loose stools, 3x a day. I don't know if it's due to the surgery or the Flagyl or the Cipro, and I am worried.

beth22
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Re: Cipro and Flagyl

Postby beth22 » Tue Feb 16, 2021 1:54 am

Keep in contact with your doctor and if things don't improve, you might ask about testing for c difficile. I don't know how accurate a test would be until he is off antibiotics though.

poppy86
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Re: Cipro and Flagyl

Postby poppy86 » Fri Feb 19, 2021 1:58 pm

He has continued to have diarrhea multiple times a day all week, with no improvement. There is mucus and it smells like the distinct cdiff smell. I'm about to go to the lab to pick up a poop sample kit. I don't know if he will test negative or positive because he's still taking flagyl. This feels like a huge nightmare.

beth22
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Re: Cipro and Flagyl

Postby beth22 » Fri Feb 19, 2021 8:49 pm

Usually people test negative while on medication like Flagyl or vanco, but we have had a few posters report that they did test positive.

georgina
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Re: Cipro and Flagyl

Postby georgina » Sat Feb 20, 2021 2:48 am

You can acquire Cdiff because of Flagyl , so if the symptoms are bad the canches of positive test are high.

poppy86
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Re: Cipro and Flagyl

Postby poppy86 » Sat Feb 20, 2021 1:25 pm

Thank you for your replies Beth and Georgina. We're waiting for his test result now, they said it would be 3-5 days. In the past it was 24 hours, I don't know why such a delay now. I don't think he'll make it, he's already talking about going to the ER.

I'm extremely anxious because of all this and it's causing an IBS flare. I'm so afraid I'm going to catch the cdiff. I had 8 BMs so far myself today, alternating solid and D. For the past couple weeks I had actually been doing better, going only 1-4 times a day.

poppy86
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Re: Cipro and Flagyl

Postby poppy86 » Sat Feb 20, 2021 9:01 pm

His diarrhea is coming with increasing frequency, and he just had an accident in his pants :(. He won't make it another 3-5 days. I don't know what will happen if the test comes back negative.

Typically - that is, before he took the Cipro - he is actually constipated and needs to take Miralax. The diarrhea started after he took the Cipro. It's not a coincidence. But I don't know what the doctors will think.


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