About a month ago I went to urgent care for an awful UTI and I was prescribed antibiotics. The next day I was feeling worse than ever. I was sleeping over 13 hours a night. During the day I would sleep for 2 hours, wake up, cry, run to the bathroom, and get back into bed to cry myself to sleep. I felt like I couldn’t move without discomfort. I thought it was just a bad stomach bug.

I ended up going back to urgent care to get a temporary refill of one of my medications for bipolar disorder. In the midst of being sick, I didn’t refill it until I hadn’t taken it in 4 days. When I got to urgent care I had a fever, but they didn’t do anything but prescribe my meds.

The next day was all the worse. I was convinced I was dying. I was going to the bathroom every 20 minutes having up to 20 bowel movements in a day. I felt disgusted with myself and betrayed by my body. I’ve struggled with IBS my whole life and at the beginning of the sickness, it didn’t seem unusual for my stomach to be so upset.

When I woke up one morning I had diarrhea right in my bed, and that’s when I knew there was something wrong. I called my mom and she told me to go to urgent care, which would be my 3rd time in the same week. When I got to urgent care the doctor said he could do a stool test but it could wait until the following Monday. I wasn’t having that and insisted on the test. It came back positive for C. diff and it felt like my world came crashing down. I was happy to know what was causing my problems but it was a tough pill to swallow.

I got prescribed vancomycin 4 times a day for 10 days. I finished the treatment less than a week ago and yesterday my symptoms returned. I feel discouraged and angry that I can’t work like I used to. I’m grieving the loss of my body as it was. My plan going forward is to go back to the doctor and ask for a fecal transplant and maybe a colonoscopy. Anyone who has been infected with this disease is a damn trooper.