Got my shirt, and I’m ready to [virtually] walk for awareness tomorrow. I’ll be sharing c-diff facts on my social media to help raise awareness. I’ll also be sharing things people in my support group say they wish people knew. Here’s a start:
🦠 Half a million Americans a year experience CDI (C. diff (clostridioides difficile infection).
🦠 Most cases of C. diff infection occur while you’re taking antibiotics or not long after you’ve finished taking antibiotics.
🦠 My fellow survivors warn you: if they had to do it over, they would NEVER have taken Clindamycin, a broad-spectrum antibiotic that is a high offender for CDI. They’ve literally started a petition to ban Clindamycin. And some of them have had it permanently marked (upon advice of their doctors) as an allergy on their medical records. Spoiler alert: Cipro and Clindamycin are now no-nos on my MyChart!
🦠 C. diff can be life-threatening.
🦠 About 1 in 6 patients who get C. diff will get it again in the subsequent 2-8 weeks. This is often the start of a recurrent cycle of infections that cannot be cured by antibiotics.
🦠 One in 11 people over age 65 diagnosed with a healthcare-associated C. diff infection die within one month.
🦠 C. diff used to be considered an infection that affected only the elderly, those in assisted living, or those in hospitals. But community spread is substantially increasing. Young people are contracting it more and more. So many people in my survivors group are under the age of 40.
Stay tuned…
Wider than the Sky 