Sheesh. . .C-diff!!

Marita40

Marita40

Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
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After several weeks of suffering from what I thought was the "stomach flu," I was just diagnosed with C-diff. I'm a normally very healthy and fit 56 yr. old who had the misfortune of being placed on antibiotics after a dental surgery last December. Evidently it depleted all the "good" bacteria in my gut and along comes the C-diff toxins and move right in. I started taking Flagyl three days ago and am feeling all the lousy side-effects it is known for. Am also taking probiotics.

Until 4 days ago I was blissfully ignorant of C-diff. Now I am scaring myself by reading all the websites/forums devoted to it and how hard it is to rid the body of it. If anyone has experience with this terrible stuff, I'd appreciate hearing from you. Please send healing thoughts and prayers my way.:(
 
Marita40 said:
After several weeks of suffering from what I thought was the "stomach flu," I was just diagnosed with C-diff. I'm a normally very healthy and fit 56 yr. old who had the misfortune of being placed on antibiotics after a dental surgery last December. Evidently it depleted all the "good" bacteria in my gut and along comes the C-diff toxins and move right in. I started taking Flagyl three days ago and am feeling all the lousy side-effects it is known for. Am also taking probiotics.

Until 4 days ago I was blissfully ignorant of C-diff. Now I am scaring myself by reading all the websites/forums devoted to it and how hard it is to rid the body of it. If anyone has experience with this terrible stuff, I'd appreciate hearing from you. Please send healing thoughts and prayers my way.:(
Click to expand...
Been there, done that, and have the empty Flagyl prescription bottles to prove it.

I developed mine from taking antibiotics for a sinus infection. Two weeks of Flagyl seemed to do the job but three days after the prescription ran out, I was back where I started. My doc then put me on Flagyl again for six (6) weeks and explained the difficulty of treating c.diff and the possibility of dire consequences if treatments failed.

The six week regimen worked. Hope you have equally good results.

I now worry about the possibility of another antibiotic causing a repeat bout with c.diff. A scary thought.
 
Thanks rewahoo for your response! It is good to know that the flagyl worked for you, but also a very depressing thought that I may need a second round of it. It gives me a constant feeling of nausea (slight, but always there), dizziness, and terrible taste in my mouth.
 
Hopefully the side-effects of the med will lessen over time, but I'd trade them any day for the opportunity to rid my system of c.diff!
 
How about letting us know specifically which antibiotics caused this? Thanks.
 
ok... as an old school c programmer here I thought this thread was going to be about the tool output from a file compare tool called c-diff.
 
That has me chuckling. (But it's not me producing the "output")
 
Yes, "output" is the problem :blush:

The antibiotic that did me in was Clindamycin. Terrible. And the dentist didn't say a word about taking probiotics with it.

On the 4th day of flagyl and soldiering through it. Remaining hopeful.
 
Hope you are feeling better real soon. This one sounds like a difficult thing to get rid of.
 
It never happened to me but I know of folks that can no longer tolerate milk products after going through an antibiotic treatment. It makes me think twice before taking any antibiotics.
 
This is nothing to fool with - it did in my late MIL. I hope you will consider the fecal transplant therapy mentioned above.
 
REWahoo said:
Tyro, many types of antibiotics can be the culprit. From the MayoClnic website:
C. difficile - MayoClinic.com
Click to expand...

Thanks. I was curious about the specific ones because many are also the cause of peripheral neuropathy. From MedLink:

• Chloramphenicol
• Chloroquine
• Clioquinol
• Dapsone
• Ethambutol
• Fluoroquinolones
• Griseofulvin
• Isoniazid
• Linezolid
• Mefloquine
• Metronidazole
• Nitrofurantoin
• Podophyllin resin
• Suramin

There seem to be some commonalities.

Tyro
 
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Well Marita, we can suffer through this together. I was just diagnosed with this today. This really blows. Hope you are feeling better.
 
MissMolly, so sorry. It is a terrible thing. Please keep us updated if you want. A week off flagyl--which made me equally as sick as the infection--I relapsed and am now on a second round. Have been dealing with this now since Jan 4 and have had pretty much no life during this whole time.
 
Marita40 said:
MissMolly, so sorry. It is a terrible thing. Please keep us updated if you want. A week off flagyl--which made me equally as sick as the infection--I relapsed and am now on a second round. Have been dealing with this now since Jan 4 and have had pretty much no life during this whole time.
Click to expand...

Marita - I am on my second week of Flagyl and feeling much better. I am fortunate that I have not had the bad effects from the Flagyl that so many others, like you, have reported. I go back to the doc next week and am keeping my fingers crosssed that all is well now. However, I've read that many people appear to be cured and after a couple days off the Flagyl, it all comes roaring back. I am so sorry you are having to deal with this again. This is a horrible bug. I hope you are feeling better soon.
 
Good luck MissMolly! MIne came back after about 8 days, which seems pretty typical. Many others are cured after more rounds of antibiotics, so I'll just keep my fingers crossed. There's a C-diff forum that's pretty active on the web; however, it can also scare you because many of the cases are very, very tough. It is also sad to hear about children, even tiny infants, getting it.
 
Sorry to hear about your cases. My elderly father ended up with this a few years ago after hip surgery. It was very, very severe and he lost so much weight.

He went through the rounds of flagyl, but they did little. He finally went through a round of vancomycin and we also added probiotics with his physician's blessing. The vanco was like $10 a pill? In any case, it solved it for him. We used these antibotics of last resort very responsibly, not wanting to add vanco to the list of resistant antibotics.

As his caregiver, I washed my hands like crazy and was taking probotics right along with him. For much of the time, he was in a wing of a rehab center where everyone had cdiff. This stuff is nasty and nobody wants to talk about it. It has made me not want to go to the hospital. As it was, I kept my hands to myself and did a near medical scrub down every day when I was out of there.

To end on a postitive note: even though dad was into his 80s with this, and even though he lost 15% body weight (and he was not obese to start), he came through and is alive today. You CAN beat this.
 
Joewras, so glad to hear your father recovered. It is a particularly terrible disease in the elderly and I understand it runs like crazy through hospitals and nursing homes.
My symptoms were actually fairly mild when they returned after the first round of flagyl: they didn't come roaring back but crept in over a day or two. My first time with symptoms, on the other hand, was dreadful in their virulence. So I am assuming that each round of flagyl kills off more and more spores until they are overwhelmed by regrowth of the "good" bacteria: I guess that's the point. Anyway, I'm feeling less sick on this second round of flagyl and it did almost immediately clear up the C-diff symptoms (within a day or two). I think it is a psychological thing: I know what to expect and that I made it through the first round so I can handle this one, too.
Perhaps the only good thing to come out of this ordeal is that I discovered kefir, sent away for kefir grains, and am now happily brewing my own. I really love it and can truly feel its healing qualities.
 
Never heard of kefir. Thanks for the tip.

Dad had the c-diff in '07. Probotics were around, but not the rage like today. In any case, I believe they really helped. My sister and I also had Dad trying yogurt and other thing he never had in his life before. It all helps.
 
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Am so sorry, and wishing you well. Yours is an important story for everyone's awareness. OTOH, I find if I read too much about something on the Web I end up scaring myself to death.

Slight, but relevant rant - Back when I was a kid and got sick, my Mom just kept me home in bed for a few days till I was better. Meanwhile, other parents ran their kids to the doctor for antibiotics, because heaven forbid they miss a day of school. So now we have antibiotic-resistant bugs, and the antibiotics only kill our good intestinal flora. I've read that some doctors feel society is almost back to a "pre-antibiotic" state - scary.

Amethyst

Marita40 said:
After several weeks of suffering from what I thought was the "stomach flu," I was just diagnosed with C-diff. I'm a normally very healthy and fit 56 yr. old who had the misfortune of being placed on antibiotics after a dental surgery last December. Evidently it depleted all the "good" bacteria in my gut and along comes the C-diff toxins and move right in. I started taking Flagyl three days ago and am feeling all the lousy side-effects it is known for. Am also taking probiotics.

Until 4 days ago I was blissfully ignorant of C-diff. Now I am scaring myself by reading all the websites/forums devoted to it and how hard it is to rid the body of it. If anyone has experience with this terrible stuff, I'd appreciate hearing from you. Please send healing thoughts and prayers my way.:(
Click to expand...
 
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