Tag: infection Posts

Almost two years ago, I was at work one day, banging on the keys and writing some code. Suddenly, I felt cold, and realized that my hands and my fingers were shaking. I tried to stay at work as long as I could, but after a while my hands were shaking so bad I could hardly function at my job, so I went home. I curled into bed, and wrapped my duvet as tightly as it would go around myself. No matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t stop shivering. I ended up eventually falling asleep, and slept most of the night away. When I woke up, I was drenched in sweat, feeling like absolute garbage. Six days later I wound up in the emergency room at St. Paul’s hospital, hooked up to an oxygen mask with my finger in a pulse-oxymeter. An hour before, I was at home, […]

I’m currently at the internet cafe on Davie street killing some time waiting for a Dr’s appointment next door. I’ve been waiting for some test results from that whole stupid bacterial infection thing I got in the hospital last year. Not really sure what’s going to happen there. Tonight I’m also the official photographer for the Facebook Developer Meetup down at the Vancouver Film School. Rebecca (aka Miss604) will be down there doing the official live-blog, so make sure you check it out if you want to follow remotely. I’m looking forward to taking it easy next weekend. One of the things I’m historically not very good at is saying no to people. Lately I’ve been involved in so many things that I’m starting to feel spread a little thin. I’m not sure what I’ll end up doing next weekend, but I’m probably going to turn my cell phone off […]

Today was a strange day. I woke up this morning and went down to the clinic to get the results of some tests I had done this week. If you’ve been keeping up with my saga, I somehow got a digestive infection when I was in the hospital with pneumonia a few months ago. It’s not contagious or anything – about 10% of people in the hospital get it after a week, and over 50% of people generally get it after four weeks in a hospital. You typically don’t get this unless your body is hit with a really hard broad-spectrum anti-biotic, which in my case was clyndamycin in the hosital. This type of antibiotic actually ends up killing all the helpful bacteria in your stomach and intestines, making your susceptible to other infections such as the one I got (since the good bacteria normally fight it off for you). […]

I finally got a hold of my doctor back in Vancouver today to try to figure out what’s wrong with me and what I can do about it. It turns out that I have a fairly serious infection caused by a bacteria called “clostridium difficile.” C. Difficile sometimes lives in the intestines and is normally kept in check by a range of good bacteria that also live there. Unfortunately, as a result of the antibiotic treament I had in the hospital (which was clindamycin I believe), a large portion of the good bacteria have died off, leaving a pile of bad stuff to proliferate: Clostridium Difficile Infection (CDI), can range in severity from asymptomatic to severe and life threatening, and many deaths have been reported, especially amongst the aged. People are most often infected in hospitals, nursing homes, or institutions, although C. difficile infection in the community, outpatient setting is […]