A rocky start

Clostridium difficile. It's everywhere. In every human and animal, on every surface. It's on your counter tops, your toilet seat, your car keys, your steering wheel, your door handles. Everywhere. It hangs out in your digestive tract, seemingly harmless, blending in with all the other bacteria. But it's a two-faced little bastard! It lies waiting for an opportunity to strike. To rapidly multiply and put out toxins that attack the lining of the intestine. My body presented this opportunity after I was prescribed some antibiotics for a sinus infection in late December. Antibiotics destroy bacteria. Both good and bad bacteria, including the bacteria that normally keeps these little bastards at bay, and so they took off! The first few days were no big deal, in fact I didn't even realize there was a problem. Just some frequent bathroom trips and I figured hmmm, must have eaten something that didn't agree with me. Then New Year's day came and I have what appeared to be the most ferocious hang-over in the world, over seemingly small quantities of alcohol. I had taken a shot of Mamajuana, the drink from the Dominican Republic, but so did others. I assumed I must just be getting too old to handle booze. The two days after New Year's Day were marginally better, though I was starting to suspect I had IBS. Then on Friday all hell broke loose in my digestive tract. I was in more pain than I was in after taking the castor oil to get Trent started! Seriously. More abdominal pain than labour! By Saturday morning I was ready to die.
On Saturday afternoon Brian arranged for Trent to go hang with Aunt Jenn while he took me to the emergency doctor. A blood test revealed my white cell count was really high (1230), which indicated some kind of problem, but it was the (excuse the too much information here) stool sample the next day that revealed the true problem. For the next 3 days I didn't get out of bed except for the frequent trips to the bathroom. In a cruel twist of irony, the very thing that causes this condition is also the thing that will help me get better. Antibiotics. Today is Wednesday. It's taken 4 days since starting the meds to see improvement. Today is the first time that I've been able to sit up and actually focus on my computer screen without getting dizzy. Today I feel a million times better than I did yesterday, but I still feel absolutely awful. The worst part in all of this is that I haven't been able to hug Trent in days for fear of passing it on, and because I'm too weak to even lift him up.
In all of this, Brian's been holding the family together. He's single-handedly taken care of Trent and me, kept the house in order, cooked, cleaned, made runs to the store, and kept the cats and fish alive.
This isn't the start to 2008 I had in mind. I am optimistic that I'm just getting all the bad stuff out of the way so that I can have a fantastic year. The last 3 years have been amazing and I hope this year will continue the trend.