Vancomycin questions....

Thank you in advance for any insight y'all can give me! I'm wondering your experience with vanco. Not many people seem to report fatigue while on it, but I'm totally wiped out and it's making me anxious to think that it's NOT attributable to the medicine.

Full story: two weeks ago I started having D 4x/day, and then after a few days, suddenly overnight it got really bloody and increased to 8-10x/day. Due to the nature of the symptom onset, stool & blood tests, and lack of my typical positive response to Uceris, my GI guessed it was c.diff or another infection*. SO I started vancomycin (luckily my insurance covered it alright) and within 48 hours the bleeding stopped completely. Hooray! I am also on prednisone just in case. I've been on both for ten days.

YET -- and this is where my questions come in -- I am still having D 3-4x/day and I feel super super fatigued. I am filled with anxiety because I don't know why I feel so bad. I figure it could be these two possibilities. Does anyone have any experience that would point to one of these explanations?

1 - The vanco is wiping me out, in which case I'll be more functional when I get off the vanco. (But I don't see a lot of people talking about feeling bad on vanco. Does vanco make anyone else feel bad?) My symptoms are not perfect yet but maybe the broad-spectrum antibiotic makes it impossible to avoid D entirely, until I get off of it...

2 - The days of diarrhea are wiping me out and I just have to wait longer to feel better. And maybe it's not an infection after all - despite the vanco curing the bleeding pretty much immediately.

Any experience/thoughts you can share would be awesome!!

*The stool test didn't actually test positive for c.diff but the doc said that there are three kinds of c.diff tests and it doesn't always show up, and besides it could be another infection entirely.


Currently taking:
30 mg prednisone, tapering by 10mg every week to 0mg
14 days of vancomycin
probiotics
slow iron
liquid vitamins and minerals

It's probably not the Vanco wiping you out because it is not absorbed into your body and stays in your digestive system. You're probably wiped out by the C-diff, or whatever is causing the diarrhea.

Hi,

I hope I can be somewhat helpful.

Two and half years ago my doctor diagnosed me with an active flare and C diff. I was going to the bathroom 10+ times a day. I also had crazy abdominal pain that literally would keep me up all night. One of the first things my doctor did was test me for c diff/parasites/etc when all of those came out negative (including the c diff) he decided to do a colonoscopy assuming that it was a flare. When they do colonoscopies they test u again for c diff and any other things. He had already started me on prednisone before my colonoscopy and although I was feeling better I still was going to the bathroom like 6-7 times a day. The following day he called me and said that my test for my cdiff came out positive. He immediately started me on vanco for 14 days. I felt better but still was experiencing bloody diarrhea. He told me that c diff is sometimes resistant to the antibiotics so he prescribed me a second dose of vanco. I basically was on antibiotics for a month and slowly started to taper off the prednisone 40, 30, 20, 10, & 5! Only after the second dose did my c diff clear. I find it weird that your doctor doesn't try to confirm a positive test for c diff.

I'm wishing you all the best of luck! Stay positive, c diff can be problematic and you might just need a second dose of vanco. You also have to remember that your colon is injured and is probably healing it's wounds as we speak and that's why you might be experiencing diarrhea.

Hopefully the prednisone will also help with your symptoms. When I was diagnosed with c diff I just assumed that it might have triggered a flare but with the prednisone n vanco for a month my stool returned to normal the first week of February! December I experienced constant pain and was running to bathroom every hour. By January I was able to treat the infection and return back to my normal life. I am wishing the same for you or even a faster recovery.

Speaking as a person who has gone through many bouts of C-diff I always found that vancomycin did not always eliminate the c-diff completely.

The cure for me with C-Diff was to get on a trial of FMT if you have one near you.
The cure rate for c-diff is in the 80-90% range with FMT and I have been clear for over 2 years now.

I originally got C=Diff from a hospital stay at a small hospital in my area

You shouldn't be on prednisone if you have c diff, that's what my doctor told me when I had c diff. anyway and it makes sense to me since prednisone suppresses the immune system. Vanco made me feel crappy but it did get rid of my c diff. I am sure i was exhausted (it was back in 2016, so I can't really remember), but I would attribute that to being so sick. I was a lot sicker than going 8 times a day when I had C diff. I was hospitalized and the sickest I've ever been in my entire life and in severe pain. Your doctor really shouldn't just "guess" you have c diff or another infection! Why didn't he test for other infections?