Annie Ross' Case History

[Guest]

I can't believe I'm posting my "case history" but I'm doing it as a way of offering hope for those who visit this site. Every positive story helps. I developed c diff after taking clindamycin for a bad tooth infection in May. I became very sick at the end of my 10 day prescription of clindamycin with the typical c diff symptoms, and had trouble eating anything other than very bland food. After two weeks of suffering (during which I was also enduring horrible mouth sores because of the tooth infection and root canal), I finally called my family doctor and he prescribed me a two week regimen of flagyl, which didn't help at all and made me feel horrible. By this time I had begun researching my symptoms on the internet and found this website. I was convinced I had c diff and needed vanco even thought my dr. was not sure yet. Finally, after my stool sample came back positive for c diff, my dr. prescribed me vanco for 2 weeks. Within days, the vanco helped me start to feel relatively normal again. My family dr. agreed with me that I should get a second opinion from a gastroenterologist, so I did, and he extended the prescription for vanco for another 2 weeks. After a month of being on vanco 4x/day, my gastro dr. approved me tapering off of it in whatever way I wanted, and prescribed plenty of it to last through the taper. <BR> <BR>So, after being sick for about two months, but feeling so much better on the vanco, I started tapering the vanco, with the help of information I found through this website. I also started taking the probiotic primal defense during the taper. I took my last vanco at the end of the second week of August, three months after this whole ordeal started with my tooth infection, and by this time I was up to 6 primal a day. During the time I was on vanco, and through the taper and the first few weeks off of vanco, I experienced some bad days but mostly good. There were times I thought I was relapsing, but everything I had read on this site, and heard from my dr. was to be patient and accept that my body needed time to heal itself. <BR> <BR>I am posting my case history because I have now officially been off of vanco entirely for six weeks. I am still taking 6 primal a day and plan to continue that for another 6 weeks, and then will probably go down to 1 or 2 primal a day for life because I feel so good and "normal" on them. I truly believe that tapering the vanco, rather than just stopping cold turkey, and taking the primal defense have been instrumental in my recovery from this nightmare. I have had no really bad days in the past few weeks. I truly believe I have beaten this thing, and feel better than I have in months. It is wonderful to be able to eat fruits and vegetables again -- three months without a salad and with basically no fruit other than bananas was so hard for me. I don't know if I'll ever go back to eating dairy, but that's ok. I am enjoying my daily servings of stonyfield farms yogurt and my body actually feels better without dairy. I hope my case history helps others see that as scary and painful as c diff is, it can be beat and you can heal. This website can empower you to heal yourself, as it has me!

[Guest]

I am a British health writer looking to interview women about their experience of C. Difficile for a feature in Grazia magazine (a UK weekly). Please get in touch with me if you'd like to help. <!-- BBcode auto-mailto start --><a href="mailto:karen.evennett@blueyonder.co.uk">karen.evennett@blueyonder.co.uk</a><!-- BBCode auto-mailto end --> <BR><BR>[Guest Posted by: 'karen evennett']