melbelz

I am not a nurse but a cardiovascular sonographer. I did pick up C-diff from somewhere I work probably. There is a small percentage of people that actually have C-diff residing in their intestines. I was on antibiotics for 10 days for a UTI. The last few days on the antibiotics I had diarrhea and it went away after I stopped taking the antibiotics. A week later here comes the C-diff (more diarrhea). Strangely I am on more antibiotics, these are just a different kind that specifically are supposed to kill C-diff. All of my "good" bacteria was killed with the original dose of antibiotics just leaving me very susceptible to catching C-diff. I actually work mostly in a clinical setting and one day a week at a hospital. I have read what people wrote and they just tend to blame it on handwashing techniques following a patient with C-diff. My GI doc told me that C-diff spores are all over the hospital. They can live on any surface up to 6 months! Normal cleaning methods do not kill C-diff, you have to use bleach. I don't know many hospitals/clinics that use bleach on all their surfaces. Usually it is a transeptic, antibacterial spray that DOES NOT kill C-diff. A typical hospital scenario: You walk in a patients room and squirt hand sanitizer on your hand. You go in the room, maybe adjust the bed, turn on the light, take a blood pressure in a room where the patient is NOT in isolation for C-diff but the previous patient had it and it was not cleaned with bleach. You walk out and squirt sanitizer on your hand. That C-diff is on your hand and you thought you cleaned it. A lot of hospitals say squirt 5 times then wash your hands. You being a healthy person without a compromised immune system will be fine. But then you go to the next room and could potentially spread that C-diff to a patient who is on antibiotics. Any health care professional on antibiotics should be extra cautious and wash their hands pretty much all the time. Not only did I have diarrhea but started vomiting with the antibiotics for about 3 days. Can you say...almost ended up in the hospital from dehydration. The doc changed my prescription to a lower dose more times a day and that has helped tremendously. The worst part is that I read online that C-diff returns in a lot of people, so this might be an ongoing problem for me in the future. I love my job, but I guess it is a potential risk we take being in the health care field.