I can't really even believe I did this, much less that it worked.
My doctor gave me the long Rx for those antibiotics that helped. We talked about what would happen if they stopped helping. He mentioned a few of his patients that have not gotten any medical relief and that he was reading up on stool transplants. I had the expected reaction. He told me a story which was not off-topic about how his teachers in medschool all completely rejected the H.Pylori hypothesis for ulcer formation as voodoo talk. Then, fifteen years later, someone devised a way to really test it and boom, almost all ulcers are curable with antibiotics. All those esteemed professors were wrong. He mildly mentioned some current researchers who attribute Crohn's to low-level TB exposure from cow's milk and UC to enterotoxic bacterial overgrowth following a viral infection. How those guys are getting hooted at now but he thinks in ten years they will be heroes. He looked at me meaningfully with that small discussion.
The antibiotics stopped working in six weeks.
The headfog was brutal, my hair started falling out again in handfuls, the belly pain was coming back, the diarrhea went from three times a day to five then eight. The arthritis called Ankylosing Spondilitis which is even meaner than it sounds, revved up so I could barely get out of my car or hold my keys. My nails started breaking to the quick either from clumsiness or poor circulation, and the muscle spasms came back in my legs and feet. I went back to pain level seven all day, every day. My face swelled up and my ears were ringing. Then the fainting started again. When your gut becomes porous, your whole body goes wrong.
It was kind of a bad two weeks.
Understatement. My last chance had failed, and I got really, really sad. Then I got desperate.
I did a stool transplant.
I haven't had diarrhea in almost two weeks. It stopped when I got the stool enema. Yes, it was as gross as it sounds.
My headfog has cleared quite a bit. My belly has almost stopped hurting. My hair stopped falling out. The musculoskeletal mess is very slowly improving, and I don't get headspin or ringing ears.
It didn't make it all the way to the ileum, which is the source of the worst pain, so that's been gradual; I may have to repeat it.
But still; kind of like a miracle. I'm so ready to have a life. I hope this gives me one back.
My doctor gave me the long Rx for those antibiotics that helped. We talked about what would happen if they stopped helping. He mentioned a few of his patients that have not gotten any medical relief and that he was reading up on stool transplants. I had the expected reaction. He told me a story which was not off-topic about how his teachers in medschool all completely rejected the H.Pylori hypothesis for ulcer formation as voodoo talk. Then, fifteen years later, someone devised a way to really test it and boom, almost all ulcers are curable with antibiotics. All those esteemed professors were wrong. He mildly mentioned some current researchers who attribute Crohn's to low-level TB exposure from cow's milk and UC to enterotoxic bacterial overgrowth following a viral infection. How those guys are getting hooted at now but he thinks in ten years they will be heroes. He looked at me meaningfully with that small discussion.
The antibiotics stopped working in six weeks.
The headfog was brutal, my hair started falling out again in handfuls, the belly pain was coming back, the diarrhea went from three times a day to five then eight. The arthritis called Ankylosing Spondilitis which is even meaner than it sounds, revved up so I could barely get out of my car or hold my keys. My nails started breaking to the quick either from clumsiness or poor circulation, and the muscle spasms came back in my legs and feet. I went back to pain level seven all day, every day. My face swelled up and my ears were ringing. Then the fainting started again. When your gut becomes porous, your whole body goes wrong.
It was kind of a bad two weeks.
Understatement. My last chance had failed, and I got really, really sad. Then I got desperate.
I did a stool transplant.
I haven't had diarrhea in almost two weeks. It stopped when I got the stool enema. Yes, it was as gross as it sounds.
My headfog has cleared quite a bit. My belly has almost stopped hurting. My hair stopped falling out. The musculoskeletal mess is very slowly improving, and I don't get headspin or ringing ears.
It didn't make it all the way to the ileum, which is the source of the worst pain, so that's been gradual; I may have to repeat it.
But still; kind of like a miracle. I'm so ready to have a life. I hope this gives me one back.
That must have been some good shit, man.
ReplyDeleteHahahaha! Unquestionably. I am scared to death it will stop working; don't want to do that procedure again!
ReplyDeleteI was just reading up on it - I'm sure it was gross, but probably not as bad as an NG tube to your small intestine. Now THAT's got an overwhelming ICK factor.
ReplyDeleteI had the NG tube to my small intestine when I was in the hospital. Intensely painful to the nasal turbinates, excruciating to the nasopharynx, and the inability to stop retching and smothered feeling from the mass quantities of viscous lidocaine (numbing snot) cannot be overstated.
ReplyDeleteThey said I had a "cascade" stomach; it had folded on itself from being NPO, and that meant they had to TWIST AND TWIST AND TWIST the thing in my nose about a hundred times. I counted.
Ugh. Worse than I thought. And they weren't even putting fecal matter down the tube like this procedure I read about. http://scienceblogs.com/aetiology/2007/12/fecal_transplants_to_cure_clos.php
ReplyDeleteYeah, I don't get that. The NGT would hurt like a big dog plus scratch your mucus membranes; everyone who has one gets a nosebleed. You'd have a lot of risk of getting an infection. Plus, the small bowel is not supposed to have flora, it is designed to kill germs with homemade lye. Why not just do the enema for crying out loud
ReplyDelete