Poo transplants save 14,000 lives a year

Zhaan

well shit.

it's a huge article so make sure to read the whole thing here :)

For Rhiannon Maher, the suffering began last August. Maher, then a 20-year-old college student, had recently been hospitalized for colitis after experiencing a bout of vomiting and diarrhea, but her doctors soon diagnosed her with a far more serious condition: Clostridium difficile, or C. diff, a debilitating intestinal bacterium that kills an estimated 14,000 Americans every year.

Her mother, Paula Peters, spent the next nine months taking care of Rhiannon, tending to the girl as she endured high fevers, chills, and a seemingly endless cycle of diarrhea. Bedridden and gaunt, Rhiannon was forced to drop out of her local Massachusetts college, quit her job at a candy factory, and was too embarrassed to tell her friends why she couldn't go out with them on weekends. The expensive antibiotics her doctors prescribed at first showed promise, but within weeks, the C. diff would come roaring back.

"The C. diff took over my life," Maher said in an interview with The Verge. "It never really occured to me that I might die, but then I was in so much pain sometimes that I was like, maybe that wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.

Zhaan

I think we've had a thread on this topic before, actually. Fascinating, isn't it? I do wonder if the actual procedure is as gross as my current mental image is though.

brb, google.

Slacker

Talk about having a shit life..

Zhaan

Slightly amusing that I posted this in 2013. I got three rounds of fecal transplants a few years ago, but sadly they didn’t help much.

The actual process wasn’t too bad honestly. First round was done via colonoscopy (up the butt) the other two via upper endoscopy (throat). I got heavy sedatives each time, and interestingly endoscopy was the most uncomfortable method. They had to double the sedatives because I resisted too much.

There are pills/capsulses too but apparently they aren’t considered as effective here.