Another New Antibiotic

Annie's chronic diarrhea has been going on about 6 weeks now.  She finished her round of flagyl with very little to no improvement.  Her frequency has gone down slightly from about 4+ episodes a day to 2-3 episodes per day, but supposedly the flagyl should have completely solved the problem.  So last week the pediatrician ordered us to do a stool sample which isn't the easiest thing on a child in diapers with liquid stool.  But the culture confirmed that she has C. diff, which is exactly what the doctor suspected when he put her on the flagyl.  For some reason though, she didn't respond to the the flagyl.

So now, after trying probiotics and flagyl, we're starting another new antibiotic: vancomycin.  It's an extrememly potent antibiotic usually given by IV with some pretty bad side effects, but since Annie's bacteria are all in her GI tract, we'll be giving her an oral form which is not easily absorbed into the body, so hopefully we can avoid some of the negative side effects.  We've been concerned about giving her this drug since it is so powerful--it will probably kill off all the bacteria (good and bad) which might allow fungus and yeast to grow which would be a big problem.  Justin described the vancomycin to me as being "like taking a bazooka to her bowels".  With it killing off so much good and bad bacteria, he suspects that Annie's diarrhea is going to get a lot worse before it gets better.  We'll see.

We tried scheduling an appointment with the GI doctor before proceeding with such a hard core drug, but the next available appointment isn't until mid-November!!  Omaha REALLY needs more doctors!!  At times like this I wish we were back in Austin with all our old doctors who would get us in within a couple of days.

So we'll go ahead and try the vancomycin.  If it doesn't work we'll see if our pediatrician can get us into the GI clinic any sooner.  Annie still has no sheets on her bed and is still sleeping without pajamas and needing a daily morning shower.  Hopefully we can get all this cleared up soon.  We're all getting a little worn out!