CHANGED MY ANTIBIOTICS

Today I went to see my Crohn's doc.  I told her that I have been sick again and she was noticeably concerned.  She checked out my throat and said it didn't look good.  I was coughing.  My lungs were clear and there seemed to be no sign of pneumonia. But I told her I had a lot of tummy pain.  She immediately changed my antibiotics to another type that will not upset my stomach as much.  Now I am on another 10 days of the new antibiotic. 

Then she tried to check out my gut.  Well, she barely got to touch me and I jumped off the table.  She got concerned when she heard my symptoms (trust me you don't want to hear them!) and decided to have me tested for C. diff "Clostridium difficile".  C. diff is a spore-forming bacterium that is best known for causing antibiotic-associated diarrhea.  Because I have been on antibiotics twice now in three or four weeks, I may have contracted C. diff.  How do we test for this?  It is diagnosed by stool specimens tested for the toxins.  I get to bring the lab a stool specimen.

It is funny (not ha ha funny, weird funny) that this sickness season is sort of like it was about four years ago the year that Brenda's father passed away.  It was an awful fall/winter.  I got the flu (this was before I was getting the flu shot because we weren't sure I could get them while on Enbrel) and it turned into bronchitis.  Or maybe it was the other way around.  During this time Brenda's dad got very ill and was put in the hospital.  We didn't know when we would have to fly back East.  Right when I got the sickest, her dad passed and we had to jump on a plane.  I hated being around her family while I was so sick and tried to pull myself together and be useful.  Popping antibiotics every couple of hours, taking cough medicine and sucking on cough drops.  As soon as we got back I went to the doctors and was diagnosed with walking pneumonia and that carried on for a month, through the end of the year.  I was sick from October until the end of the year.  Horrible!

Until tomorrow...