The stomach infection of death, and why you should check every single ingredient of what you put into your body when you're on Flagyl

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Ok friends, bare with me as I explain what has been going on with my body the past month +. I will try to be as brief as possible, I debated whether to share the whole bits and pieces of it all, but what caused my er trip this past Monday was 100% preventable. No one educated me, so if I can share this and save one person from going through the pain and sickness I've went through, it's worth it.

Here we go!

Monday Sept 28, 2020 : Diagnosed with a double ear infection by my ENT. Fluids from ear are making me sick to my stomach. He prescribes a new to me antibiotic instead of my tried and true one. Stupidly, I let him. The antibiotic immediately starts bothering my stomach * (This is important to the entire story) and I don't feel like it's competing getting rid of my infection. I'm off work sick the entire week with no clue that I would STILL be off work sick over a month later.

Monday October 5, 2020: Another mostly sleepless night. I feel worse than the week before. I do a virtual visit with MedExpress and the Dr tells me I need to go be seen in person and have a COVID test. Thankfully they are able to see me from my vehicle, because I didn't have the strength to walk inside and sit around. They test me for COVID, the Dr says ears look good but now it appears I have a sinus infection. I get my preferred antibiotic and go back home. COVID test comes back negative, and I am relieved.

Monday, (WHY the Mondays??!) October 12, 2020: I am SICK. Like I have never been before. Nauseated, Vomiting, all the unpleasant stomach stuff. My stomach is in so much pain, I have my arms wrapped around it. I am having a hard time staying conscious as I lay on the bathroom floor. I finally am able to take my temp and it's over 101. I know something is wrong within my body, and thanks to COVID and my sinus infection I know it's nothing I caught. I haven't left my house since my car visit to MedExpress a week ago. I realize I am going to need more tests than my Dr's office can handle, and the passing out is concerning me, so I get a lovely ride to the hospital in the Ambulance. I have a nightmare visit there, at one point I am going to lay down on the floor because of being so dizzy and being left alone in a room with just a chair. SIGH. Tests upon tests later, with no Dr coming in to share the results, someone finally breezes in and tells me I have a kidney infection, and what antibiotics I will take, and that I have to leave now. And then they literally kicked me outside. A friend takes me back home, Mom comes and picks up me and the antibiotics and we head home to the farm so she can take care of me.

Friday, October 16, 2020: I woke up over night with pretty much the same thing as what happened Monday. Mom gets up, she calls my Dr, and we are able to set up a telehealth apt for me. My Dr says he has looked over everything from the hospital and he thinks they diagnosed me wrong. None of my labs point to a kidney infection, instead he thinks I have the gut infection of death, C.diff. C.diff is an infection of your colon and intestines' and it's basically the 2020 version of a gut infection. ITS TERRIBLE. I trust my Dr and clearly I wasn't getting better, so he calls in the antibiotic FLAGYL (This is key here folks) and when my nausea is subsiding my Mom runs off to the Rensselaer Walmart to pick up Flagyl. Sidenote- C.diff is commonly brought on by a reaction to an antibiotic, like the one I was put on 9-28-20!!!

Upon picking up Flagyl, the Pharmacist warns her that I cannot have alcohol with it. No problem, I don't drink. Pharmacist goes on to say that it can be found in cough syrup and mouthwash as well. Says to watch out for Propylene Glycol. I did some googling and found out it can be in salad dressings as well, so as my Mom was force feeding me food to take my meds at 9 am, 6 pm and 1 am (that 1 am was NOT FUN) we were very careful to not eat any food that might have that in it.

So I start taking the Flagyl and my home healthcare nurse, aka Mom, notices that I start feeling better almost immediately after starting the medicine. Dr C was right! HURRAY! Good health shall return!

Fast forward to....

Tuesday, October 20, 2020: My Poor Mom's birthday. We both wake up with colds. No bueno. We start to worry a bit as I usually go straight into a sinus infection and I absolutely cannot take antibiotics for that with my current gut infection. Mom calls into the Rensselaer Walmart to check with them to see if I can take Tylenol Cold for my Cold. The Pharmacist says, Yes, thats not a problem.

Spoiler alert- SHE.WAS.WRONG.

So I continue on getting better from the gut infection but still feeling nauseated and tired and just not great. As well as having a cold, which didn't help. I'm taking my tylenol cold every 4 hours and trying to get better. I decide that I'm ok enough to have my parents take me back to Lafayette so I can resume teaching online on Monday. So they take me back on Sunday, October 25, 2020. I take OTC medicine that afternoon. (Which I had googled and nothing said it wasn't safe to take, my Dr had even said I could take it)

Monday, October 26, 2020: I wake up at Midnight and take my next to last dose of Flagyl. I drift off to sleep for maybe an hour and then wake up alittle after 1 am, and I do not feel good. I begin to wonder what is wrong with me and Mondays? LONG story short, as the night and then morning progress, I get sicker and sicker and we are back to horrific stomach pain, nausea and vomiting. Somehow I manage to take my Flagy in the 7 am hour thinking it would help. (Spoiler alert, BAD IDEA) I email my Mom to come back to Lafayette. I message my Dr and wait to hear from him. Mom gets there and within an hour I am worse than I was. She calls my Dr and tells her to take me straight to the hospital, this is not normal. Now I'm not only incredibly sick but super freaked out as well.

We get to the hospital, Mom helps me out into a wheelchair and that is the last I see of her for 8?! hours. I get immediately taken back to a room with a Bed, (Unlike last time) and a Nurse, and the Dr is in there within minutes. The one bright spot of C.diff is that it's highly contagious so I got to go in an isolation room right away and be seen much quicker than 2 weeks ago.

They take blood, urine, do another CT Scan, I get Zofran and Fentanyl via IV, twice for my pain and nausea. Thankfully both meds work and help me from being in the terrible state I was when I got to the hospital.

The Dr comes in and they have ruled out a ton of things, said my colon and intestines' look healthy and no c.diff in them. He was questioning whether I had it but I think it just healed up. I can't ignore the fact that the Flagyl worked and I improved. Anyways, he finally says that maybe I just have a viral infection. I question him about the OTC meds I had taken the day before since they were the only anomaly in this situation. He says he doesn't think they would cause it. I text Mom I'm getting sprung from the hospital and hey, why don't you pick up the refill to Flagyl at the Pharmacy before you get me, just to be on the safe side. So she does and then picks me up at the hospital and we set out for the farm once again.

As she's driving me she mentions the Pharmacist reminded her to not let me have any alcohol and to not have anything with alcohol in it for 3 DAYS after finishing the Flagyl. That makes some little thought bounce around in my head. and I say, I wonder if the OTC meds I took Sunday have that in them? I've never looked, but Dr C. Said it was fine to take them Monday and Monday was when I was taking my last 2 Flagyl pills. I say, when we get back home I am going to look it up.

We finally get back to the farm and I pull up the information on the OTC meds and what do I see but " Polyethylene Glycol" in the ingredients! A different P. Glycol than what they said to watch out for but then I start wondering what Glycol is? Is it alcohol? Did I poison myself? I start to wonder who I could ask that would know. I wish I knew more about Chemistry for the first time in my life and then IT HITS ME!!

I know EXACTLY who to ask!! I have a former student turned close friend, who has really become a member of my family after spending years of Thanksgiving and Easters with us. Dr

Sarah

#1 as we call her (I had two students named Sarah so she became Sarah #1 and it has stuck. ) Dr Sarah just HAPPENS to have a PhD in Chemistry and she is a professor of Chemistry at MIT. Yes, MIT. She is SMART! So I take a picture of the P. glycol and text her and tell her my predicament and about Flagyl and she basically single handedly solves my health issue for me!!!!

She drew this handy dandy little Chemistry graph below, and sent me the following:

"Chemistry lesson time! Pretty much anything with an oxygen and a hydrogen together (OH) is an alcohol. And the names usually end in "ol". Glycols are things that have 2 OH groups!

Aha! I just looked up the structure of that(Flagyl) and it also has an OH group so it is technically part alcohol. And the enzymes that digest alcohols in your body get overwhelmed if you add the antibiotic and more alcohols and it makes you sick"

So the mystery was solved! I was so relieved to know that I didn't have some horrific mystery illness and that HOPEFULLY I would be on the way to better health. The next day I just happened to look at my Tylenol cold and guess what it has in it??! GLYCOL!!! So I had been poisoning my body for almost a week. Taking the tylenol cold explains why I was still nauseated and then taking the other OTC med with glycol in it Sunday was just too much for my body to process.

It's super frustrating that all of this could have been avoided if the Walmart Pharmacist hadn't steered me wrong with the Tylenol cold and there was more information/education about what exactly I was supposed to look out for. (i.e. all glycols) When I looked at the drug info sheet for my Flagyl refill it said to avoid all Alcohols otherwise you would have "Excessive Nausea pain and vomiting". I can verify they were not wrong about that.

But through all of this I have seen God's goodness and his hand in everything. I got overwhelmed Monday night after Sarah #1 solved the mystery for me. Who would have known that 5?6?7? (I'm not even sure how long it's been now!) years ago when she came to Purdue for her PhD and looked for a piano teacher and found me, that not only would she become a part of my family, but she would be exactly the person that I needed to put the pieces together. Oh wait, GOD knew!!!! How awesome that years ago he put us in eachother's lives so I could have a PhD Chemistry MIT professor right when I needed one!

If you read all of that, God bless you. Moral of the story is, If you are on Flagyl read every single ingredient on ANYTHING you put into your body.

I am finally starting to feel more like myself and am hopeful that this next Monday comes with zero health issues and me teaching for the first time in 5 weeks!

Thanks everyone for your prayers, I have needed them!