Doxycycline

In August, I was put on Doxycycline because I had Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. I made sure that I took my Renew Life probiotic each day. Probiotics are my only maintenance med because my body does not tolerate all the others. I have been on Asacol, Pentasa, and Lialda all with very adverse reactions.

I have been in remission and was doing well. While on Doxycycline, I had the best poops that I had had in years. The problem started once I finished treatment.

I went out for lunch with the office, then later that night, my husband took me to dinner. Of course, I felt full...and like I needed to pass gas, but nothing was moving. The next day, I had a small bm, but still had that full feeling. That evening, I was miserable so I took a very low dose laxative when I got home from work. Hours later, I laid down on my bed on my left side a passed as explosion of gas. Really stinky!

For the next few days, I had normal bms except they smelled horrible and sulphuric. I also had horrible sharp cramps. This lasted for about 3 days. The smell was indescribably bad.

The cramping stopped, but I now have diarrhea. Really liquid about every 3 hours. This has been going on for 2 days.

I am still taking my probiotic and have only seen minimal traces of blood..and that was only once. Normally when I flare, I can feel some swelling on my right side, but there has been none of that.

Am I flaring, or have a bug, or could it be c diff? If flaring, I need to start prednisone as that is only thing that gets me out. I have never had c diff or "normal" diarrhea so I am at a loss. Don't want prednisone if I don't need it.

Btw, my gastro is not very helpful.

Antibiotics often mess up our bms, it can settle down on it's own, they can make us more prone to cdiff, or they can sometimes trigger flares. Certainly get a stool test, it's always a process of elimination when our symptoms worsen to get to the actual root cause.

Do your bms smell considerably worse than normal? Sometimes that's a sign that it's c diff.

You really should be on a maintenance medication. It's unfortunate that you had a reaction to mesalamine, but there's lots of other medications available.