After suffering from a recurrent antibiotic-related infection for nearly a year, antibiotic stewardship is a topic near and dear to my heart. Antimicrobial resistance is a near second. Antimicrobial resistance – when bacteria become resistant to usual antibiotics – is a complex and growing problem in the U.S. Enter SB 2076, the PASTEUR Act. Why…
Category: C difficile
What’s the deal with sourdough?
Who doesn’t love a good chewy sourdough? I sure do. I’ve made sourdough bread off and on for years. Like many, I revived this practice during the pandemic. Heck I was home, why not? And I always liked creating a starter from the wild yeast and bacteria living in the forest around me. I thought…
Post infectious irritable bowel syndrome (PIIBS) after c diff
When I was battling c diff infection, I joined a support group online. Since I have healed I follow the group and offer such support as I can. One thing I have noticed is the very common experience of abdominal symptoms that occur after infection has been treated. To be clear, these symptoms feel like…
Loving your microbiome – it matters!
I see lots talk these days about loving yourself. One part of our selves that often gets neglected is your microbiome. What is your microbiome? Your microbiome is the collection of all of the microbes, such as bacteria, fungi, viruses that naturally live on our bodies and inside of us. In our gut alone, we…
Your microbiome buddies – the benefits of taking probiotics
I’ve always said that everything is connected, and that couldn’t be more true when considering probiotics. Think of it – throughout the environment there are symbiotic relationships where different organisms co-exist to each other’s benefits. We ourselves are teeming with bacteria, in and outside of us, and for the most part, we get along just…
Let’s talk poop; fecal microbiota transplants
I was rockhounding in the high desert of Eastern Oregon when I go the call: get your husband tested. I was on my third long taper of vancomycin and it wasn’t working; c diff showed no signs of abating. I felt constantly miserable. My surgeons were worried about my continued recurrences of infection and were…
Treating c difficile: when the solution is part of the problem
For the unfortunate few who become infected by clostridioides difficile (c diff) the initial and hopefully, final treatment is an antibiotic. But, wait! Aren’t antibiotics part of the problem? Don’t people GET c diff after taking antibiotics? Well, yes. When antibiotics impair your gut microbiome by killing off both good and bad bacteria, it can…
C diff and that “oh-oh” moment
Oh-oh. That moment of urgency hits. You have diarrhea. And you just finished taking antibiotics for your (insert condition here). Are you in trouble? Next comes the search for the cause. Was it something you ate? What the heck is going on? What things cause diarrhea? The differential list of causes in long and includes…
What is C Diff and is it coming for YOU?
2020 was a rough year for many of us. But for me, 2021 was the year that said “hold my beer and watch this!” Little did I know at the end of 2020 that I would be diagnosed with a c diff infection that would send me careening into the year 2021 filled with antibiotics,…