Still unpleasant

On Sunday I wrote about my new antibiotic and how it had HORRIBLE DISGUSTING TERRIBLY AWFUL intestinal side effects. While I stopped taking the antibiotic on Sunday, and the HORRIBLE DISGUSTING TERRIBLY AWFUL intestinal side effects eased up slightly for a day or so, they came back with a vengeance on Tuesday. I spent all day yesterday waiting for a call back from the doctor. I finally heard from his assistant around 7 PM.

I was told to come in this morning (Thursday) to pick up a stool sample kit to bring to a lab to determine if the HORRIBLE DISGUSTING TERRIBLY AWFUL intestinal problems are actually being caused by C. difficile bacteria. It's common for people taking antibiotics to develop an overgrowth of this bacteria, which can lead to pseudomembranous colitis.

I shall spare you, sensitive readers, the details of my visit to the lab. They are as unpleasant as you might imagine, though quite funny on a third-grader-poop-is-funny level. Which is the level I am usually operating on.

Of course, because it's Thursday, it is highly unlikely that my lab results will be available until next week. I have a phone consultation scheduled with my doctor next Friday (Nov. 21) to discuss what all this means. In the mean time, I have stopped all antibiotics. So I'm now imagining the Lyme bacteria having a freaking party in my body, doing keg stands like frat boys and popping off babies left and right.

Oh, and have I mentioned the HORRIBLE DISGUSTING TERRIBLY AWFUL intestinal problems? I guess I get to live with them until...whenever? Because I'm having soooo much fun.

My acupuncturist this morning diagnosed me with "cold in the large intestine" (it makes sense in Chinese medicine). He treated me for that, and I'm going to try to eat "hot" foods in the hope of managing some of the HORRIBLE DISGUSTING TERRIBLY AWFUL symptoms. I've been taking ginger supplements, which seem to help a little. (Ginger is a "hot" food.)

So...yeah. Still pretty unpleasant around here. But at least I get to make totally immature third-grade poop jokes. That always makes things better.