Tiara Davis
I am a 22-year-old woman living in Jacksonville, Florida who was fairly healthy besides being severely anemic in December of 2011. My battle with clostridium difficile (C. diff) started on April 29, 2012. My first symptom was a severe shooting pain on my lower right side. I thought it was caused by my ovarian cyst but the next day I felt fine. I didn’t really eat much but still felt okay. May 1st was the day it officially started. I was nauseated and couldn’t handle drinking anything. I wasn’t throwing up but I felt like I was going to so I didn’t want to eat anything.
Between May 1st and May 6th, I went to three different emergency rooms. Two said it was the stomach flu and the third said they couldn’t help me. I was taking Amoxicillin due to a urinary tract infection and I started feeling better. Then felt worse when I course of antibiotics was finished. I finally saw a gastroenterologist who thought I could have Giardia because my stool tested positive for inflammation.
So I was on ciprofloxacin and metronidazole for ten days. I felt better. Not normal but better. Two days later I was sick again. Finally, I had an endoscopy and colonoscopy done and was diagnosed with C. diff colitis.
My doctor had no clue where it had come from. I hadn’t been hospitalized recently or on antibiotics. So I was put on metronidazole again for two weeks three times a day.
About four days before I was done with the metronidazole, I was worse than I have ever been. The pain doubled. The nausea increased. My stool was nothing more than mucus. Even liquids made me feel like I was going to vomit. The last day I ate normally was the 4th of July. On July 11th my doctor prescribed Alinia. I’ve never heard of it but I’m praying it works. I want to give up so bad but hearing everyone’s story of success keeps me going. I know there are far worse things to have but it gets so hard and I have lost more than 40 pounds since April 29th. When I first got sick, I weighed 157lbs. Today I weigh 114.
Other Stories
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Mira
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I am a healthy active older woman. On March 1, 2019 I had an explosive episode of diarrhea, out of the blue, no idea what caused it. The smell was indescribable, like nothing I had ever experienced in my long life. That was the beginning of a long… -
Dr. Melissa Geraghty, Psy.D.
At the start of 2018 I was diagnosed with C. diff. I never really heard much about C. diff outside of people acquiring it in a hospital setting or people of advanced age contracting it. Oh, was I wrong. After being sick for about 8 weeks with w… -
Cassie Padilla
As a nurse for 35 years I thought I knew a lot about C. diff but as a patient I’ve discovered I knew NOTHING about C. diff. I have had 2 episodes of C. diff in my life. The first was in 2017 following (prophylactic) antibiotics after surgery. That… -
Julia
I’ve been suffering from this infection for the past few years. When I was first diagnosed, I was shocked and thought this was something that only the elderly suffered from. It’s been 3 years since my first infection, and I still suffer daily. I’v… -
Sue
I had emergency surgery for a ruptured appendix and was given SO MANY antibiotics in the hospital. I was also given Protonix for the acid reflux that resulted from all the antibiotics. Looking at the list of risk factors for C. diff, I fit every o… -
Howard
While many of us who battle C diff have quick success with the usual antibiotics, the purpose of my entry here is to emphasize the high rate of success of the Fecal Microbiota Transplant. My C diff experience was such that A) a lengthy course of V…
