As long as I can recall, I have suffered from stomach pain and intense bloating. In 2018, I began my journey of looking for relief to these symptoms which would lead me down the dark road of contracting recurrent, antibiotic resistant C. diff at the young age of 27. I was prescribed several rounds of antibiotics by health care professionals for what they diagnosed as SIBO (whether I actually had SIBO or not, I still don’t know). Due to those antibiotics, I was dealt one of the worst cases of C. diff doctors in the Boston area had ever seen in someone my age. Six months and four rounds of the strongest antibiotics around to try and stop the infection to no avail. My only choice to avoid sepsis would be a fecal transplant (which saved my life). It was the most horrific experience of my life – the C. diff, not the transplant. I would take that fecal transplant 100 times over to stop the absolute misery that is C. diff. God bless whoever it was that donated their poop to little ol’ me.

Those who have never had C. diff find it difficult to understand that while the infection may lie dormant, the trauma is at times unbearable. I feel in a constant state of panic, every time I have a slight upset stomach, that it could be the spore emerging once again to attack my gastrointestinal tract. It is terrifying and life altering. Three years post transplant and I am still scared every time I use the bathroom that it could come back.