So I went to visit my mother in the hospital yesterday. I took Gabe with me and Izzy because she wanted to see grandma. I checked the hospital visiting hours and their rules on children and there did not seem to be a problem. Off we went.
When I got to mom’s room, she had big red signs posted all over her door. WARNING, CONTAGIOUS, VISITORS PLEASE SEE NURSE. It seems that my mother has a nasty case of Clostridium difficile aka C. diff. It’s a big deal as it can be potentially life threatening.
Just before Christmas mom came down with a case of bronchitis, for which she was given antibiotics. She finished the course and got better slowly, but surely. Last week, they thought they saw a mass in her lungs, so they sent her for a CT scan. We were worried about cancer, but that came back clean, although no one ever explained to mom what the mass was all about. By Sunday mom was feeling really good, was eating well and talking about coming back to homeschool Sam, choir practice and singing for Sam’s confirmation on the 19th.
Then on Monday, she called and said she wouldn’t be coming over to teach Sam, because she had a bad case of diarrhea. That surprised me as she had been feeling so much better, but tummy bugs come and go and that didn’t worry me too much. On Tuesday I called her in the morning to see if she was coming, and she told me that she was just too tired. In fact she was too tired to even eat dinner last night. Mom lives in a retirement community that has gourmet type foods. She loves her meals there and tells me about them in great detail! For her to be too tired to eat just isn’t like her and that made me concerned. I called her back about lunch time and she still felt bad, still had diarrhea, was very tired and she sounded really short of breath too. She also seemed to be moving in slow motion. I asked her if she was going to call the doctor. She said yes, but first she was going to have to get her socks and shoes on and go down to the sundry store and buy some soup, and she just didn’t feel like doing that now.
That didn’t sound right either, and as I posted, between her doctor’s office (I called) the nurse at her retirement center, and me, we got her into the ER where they did lots of blood work and a chest x-ray. While we were there though my mother had another bout with the diarrhea, and a wise nurse said, “I’m going to take a culture of this – just in case.”
Turns out that along with a bit of pneumonia (duh – the mass in her chest?) she also had developed C. diff from her course of antibiotics. And according to this, that’s what happened to mom.
What if mom had eaten yogurt or taken tablets to help her gut keep the C. diff at bay?
Yogurt contributes to colon health. There’s a medical truism that states: “You’re only as healthy as your colon.” When eating yogurt, you care for your colon in two ways. First, yogurt contains lactobacteria, intestines-friendly bacterial cultures that foster a healthy colon, and even lower the risk of colon cancer. Lactobacteria, especially acidophilus, promotes the growth of healthy bacteria in the colon and reduces the conversion of bile into carcinogenic bile acids. The more of these intestines-friendly bacteria that are present in your colon, the lower the chance of colon diseases. Basically, the friendly bacteria in yogurt seems to deactivate harmful substances (such as nitrates and nitrites before they are converted to nitrosamines) before they can become carcinogenic.
Probiotics, which are live microorganisms, are often given to bolster the gut’s normal flora.17,18 They’ve been used with some success to manage recurrent infection. The probiotics most frequently used to treat CDAD include Lactobacillus GG, which is a concentrate that can be added to skim milk; Lactobacillus acidophilus, found in yogurt; Saccharomyces cerevisia, which is found in brewer’s or baker’s yeast; and Saccharomyces boulardii, a nonpathogenic yeast that’s given in capsule form.1,18
So eating a couple of boxes of yogurt while taking the antibiotic might have helped my mom avoid a painful and lengthy hospital stay!
I’m posting this for a couple of reasons. If you are on antibiotics or your children or parents have to take a course of them, make sure you are taking care of the gut! It needs yogurt or a substitute to help the normal flora that are being destroyed. Also make sure you know the symptoms of C. diff. I wish I had taken action a day earlier when my mom mentioned the diarrhea on Monday, but I hadn’t putten the whole puzzle together then. That ws her first and main syndrome and if it had been treated on Monday she would have had such a steep decline with dehydration on Tuesday!
Also, my sister sent me an article that shows that C. diff is getting tougher to beat and just because we’re younger and healthy doesn’t mean we are not at risk! C. diff spores can live up to 70 days outside the body! So this weekend we are going in with gloves and maskes and a lot of bleach to deep clean mom’s bathroom, light fixtures, kitchen, anything that might be suspect to prevent the risk of reinfection for mom or any of us!
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