C. difficile – Are your guts ever normal again?

I'm going through the same thing.

@sandyabbey So, long story short, my insurance company denied me doing the cologuard. When I called my doctor, I asked what do we do now? The girl said, "Dr. said it's either a colonoscopy screening or nothing!" I said then it's nothing and please tell doctor that he had the chance for a colonoscopy screening back in March when I had the colonoscopy fmt! So, I am now looking for a new gastro doctor! Unbelievable!

@ngorman25 How are you doing after your FMT? I still haven't gone in to have the colonoscopy? I need to just buck up and make the appointment. I hate the thought of the clean out. But maybe I can get some answers as to why I have so much gas & stomach pains at night and early morning when I first wake up.

Okay everyone....this C-Diff is a spore that lives in our gut in very small amounts. It is an opportunistic bug that takes over your gut if your lose your natural flora. This is a germ that takes advantage of our small and large bowel that is not functioning correctly. Example: When we take too many antibiotics - the microbe (the good bacteria that line our walls of the gut) are destroyed and eliminated. It takes many months to put back that flora (microbe) depending on how long and how many different antibiotics and other drugs destroyed or altered this flora. Your symptoms are a results of the lack of good microbe.
But to know what truly is taking place in your gut - a gastroenterologist needs to see what is taking place on both ends. I always have the endoscopy (top scope) and the colonscopy (bottom) scope done in the day. This provides the physician with a perfect opportunity to check for any cancer, diseases, twisting or turning of the bowel, pockets and abnormalities in the GI Track. They do biopies, they see and test what they suspect is anything that might be causing you problems including diverticulosis and cancer. IT IS worth the preparation and time to have this done regardless of how inconvenient it may be. It cleans you out. It provides the best view of what is going on inside you. This is the center of how you function and helps to define what direction you need to take. I had my last complete testing including a 24 hour pH probe last year and know that I will always be a carrier for the CDiff spore. But I know how to live with it. It didn't kill me years ago like it does each year to many people. There is no cure for it. We live and learn to work around it. https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2015/p0225-clostridium-difficile.html Check this out for the statistics.
I follow a diet that is focused on diverticulosis/diabetes directed and carb counting. I also continue to drink my celery juice in the mornings. Eloise

@pines So far, so good. Fmt was March 22. Have had a couple scares with mucus and nausea and bloating but if that's all I get, I am good! As I wrote earlier, I am done with my gastro doctor. So, that's about it. Haven't posted in a while cause my tablet wasn't working and it was a pain to go on my computer. Can't gain any weight though and I worry about that if I should get sick. 89 pounds is not a whole lot to support any illness. How are you doing?

@ngorman25 , @nurseheadakes I've been doing good. The last and 4th cdiff episode was last October. I wish I would have taken Dificid earlier since that was the antibiotic that worked for me. I've been fortunate that I didn't get any more sinus infections and no need for antibiotics the entire winter. I'm sorry to hear that you're still only 89 pounds. You've really had a difficult time. As for the colonoscopy, yes I will make the appointment. During my last one, the doctor was not able to complete it as we found out I have a tortuous colon. He couldn't make the last turn. So I ended up going through the process again and having it done at the hospital a week later where they could put the contrast inside me and do it that way while I was awake. Since 4 bouts of cdiff, I feel like I've read so many studies, watched so many videos and truly educated myself on this dreadful bacteria/spore.

So, I have a question for everyone. My gastro doctor had told me on more than one occasion that it wasn't necessary to continue taking probiotics. I'm on the fence about this. I am doing ok (so far) since my fmt on March 22. Are any of you still taking probiotics?

I always take my probiotics. My GI tells me to keep taking and it's been 4 years.

Three of the doctors I have seen recommended from the start eating probiotic foods (kefir, kombucha, sauerkraut, pickles, tempeh, pickled fish etc) rather than taking the pills which are very strong the infectious disease specialist told me. So Have not taken the pills but I plan to continue eating probiotic foods forever. They are supposed to be very good for the gut and help to keep C Diff at bay. I recovered from my first but very intense episode of C. Diff in early January. I have had no relapse.

He is correct. Probiotics are meant to for short term use only. They help to fill you gut with new microbe that were taken away by antiobics and other germs that are nasty to your good bacteria. Probiotics live only for a short while and eventually are gotten rid by your body's defense mechanisms. What you want to do is fill you GI tract with good clean fruits and vegetables that have the prebiotic nutrients on them and in them so that you gut can fill up on them and use them to fight off the germs/bad bacteria that fill your GI tract on a constant basis. Only occassionally, do you need to have a good and expensive probiotic (refrigerated kind) that will help you when you have a GI Distress. This will help with the GERD, diarrhea, wrong food you ate that caused an upset stomach. Physicians are now giving probiotics along side antibiotics because they know that one helps the other in the gut. This should be the cardinal rule. It wasn't always that way years ago.