anyone know a lot about gut flora? c. diff?

[Llyra]

DD2 is 3. Here's the history:
She had pneumonia. It didn't respond to several oral antibiotics, or to injections of yet another antibiotic. She was hospitalized for 48 hours on IV antibiotics, which knocked back the pneumonia significantly and we were sent home on two more oral antibiotics. Her lungs are clear now.

We're now dealing with antibiotic-associated diarrhea, and with a yeast rash. The rash I have under control, but I can't figure out what's up with the diarrhea.

C-diff in its milder forms would make green, watery diarrhea, right? That's what I've managed to find out by googling. Well, DD HAD been having that. She's now five days off the antibiotics, and still having 5 to 7 stools a day, but they're not green anymore. What I'm seeing for the last two days has me mystified:

She's pooping yellow mustardy stuff that looks and smells EXACTLY like breastfed infant poop. Only DD is 3 and long-weaned.

What I'm trying to figure out is whether we need medical attention (ie testing for c. diff and possibly treating) or whether this switch is a GOOD sign. Does the yellow "baby" poo mean her gut is healing, or getting worse?

FWIW, she's getting home-cultured yogurt, plus Culturelle, which is Lactobacillus GG, plus a capsule a day of 1-billion-culture L. acidophillus. She's off sugar, high-fiber stuff like whole grains, beans, and berries, and liquid milk, because those seem to aggravate the diarrhea or add bulk to it, which is the last thing she needs. She doesn't drink juice.

(I'm having these weird flashbacks, because my whole house smells like baby poop. I keep lapsing into feeling like I have an infant again. My breasts are even tingling a bit. I think the smell of breastfed poop must be a letdown trigger or something for me... )

[Llyra]

Bumping this, to simplify the question:

If you had a weaned child who'd recently been on antibiotics, would you be alarmed by runny yellow stools, not watery but just loose like mustard, that look and smell like infant poo? Would you ride it out a few more days, look for medical attention, change the child's diet, add any supplements, etc.? I'm all at sea here, and all the pediatrician could do on the phone was to offer to have me bring her in, and that means dragging both twins out in the cold rain at naptime, and I'll only do that if I have a good reason.

[sbgrace]

Is she done w/the antibiotic? If she is and is still having loose stools I would culture for c. diff. If it goes on and that culture is negative I would (and did) run a metametrix stool to find out what I was dealing with. My son had a similar experience after IV and then a month of antibiotics for a serious infection. His was another bacteria, not c. diff. He does have c. diff now though (almost three years later) and I keep wondering if he picked it up back when and we just didn't detect it because of the probiotics I was using.

I will always have florastor in the house now in case we ever end up in a situation where we need to be on antibiotics again.

[Llyra]

Originally Posted by sbgrace

Is she done w/the antibiotic? If she is and is still having loose stools I would culture for c. diff. If it goes on and that culture is negative I would (and did) run a metametrix stool to find out what I was dealing with. My son had a similar experience after IV and then a month of antibiotics for a serious infection. His was another bacteria, not c. diff. He does have c. diff now though (almost three years later) and I keep wondering if he picked it up back when and we just didn't detect it because of the probiotics I was using.

I will always have florastor in the house now in case we ever end up in a situation where we need to be on antibiotics again.

Yeah, she's done with all the antibiotics (she was on 5 different ones). I was told, though, that the diarrhea might persist for up to two weeks, and still be something that is going to clear up on its own. So I don't know that they'll test her anyway, until that much time has passed. It's only been five days. What I'm trying to avoid is another course of some other antibiotic, to try to knock something out of the gut that's going to resolve on its own anyway. She has been sick and on some kind of meds or other for a full month now, and another round of another drug that comes with side effects is not what we need if we can help it.

Besides, a lot of small kids carry c-diff asymptomatically anyway, so the test may or may not tell us anything conclusive, right?

She's going in on Thursday, if it doesn't clear by then, for sure. What I'm trying to work out is 1. why the "breastmilk" poos? and 2. is it okay to wait until Thursday?

Florastor won't do us any good, because of the nystatin. (She's on that for the yeast overgrowth that's causing her rash.) She is on a good probiotic program, though.

[sbgrace]

Ah...I see on the nystatin. How long has that been going on? My son had weird poos on nystatin as I think it was killing off things.

If my kiddo tested positive for c. diff (again) I would do oral vancomycin. It's an antibiotic but it is not absorbed outside of killing c. diff. I'd load up on culturelle during and post.

Hopefully it does go away. In my experience it didn't and they did culture my son for c. diff while he was actually on the antibiotics in the hospital. They also did it pretty quickly post antibiotic too.

I don't know whether the stool is a good sign or not. My son's was sort of like that in looks and consistency though it stunk rather than smelled of breastmilk poo. She's taking a lot of probiotics and has had other diet changes so it's possible you're just seeing adjustment and repopulation. I hope.