Specifically, I tested positive for C. difficile, but not the really nasty variant, and will be taking antibiotics.

The lab results took a few days, but the various tests are positive for C. difficile, negative for giardia, and "consistent with" Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis. The doctor I talked to this afternoon said that C. diff. or other infections can produce false positives for those other things, and they'll want to retest after I recover.

The antibiotic is Dificid (fidaxomicin), twice a day for two weeks. I also have a telemedicine appointment with Carmen Monday. She's on vacation this week, so I asked the receptionist to have someone else look at the test results and call me back. The covering doctor looked at the test results, called in a prescription, and then called me back. I missed her call, and we played a bit of phone tag because she specifically said she wanted to talk to me, but didn't wait until she talked to me to call the pharmacy.

She asked me a couple of questions about symptoms, including whether I had been "able to maintain my weight" over the past weeks of illness. She also told me that C. diff can be the result of taking another antibiotic, sometimes months earlier

The only warning I found about this antibiotic when I looked it up at a few places like WebMD, was not to take it for anything except a C. difficile infection.

This is going to be expensive, because for some reason it's in my insurance company's formulary for 2025, but not 2024. I thought of getting them to send a new prescription, seven days with one refill instead of 14 days, but I do NOT want to risk a gap partway through this course of antibiotics.

Cattitude picked the prescription up this evening, and I took the first dose when he got home with it. I have made a little chart to write down each dose, with 15 rows for days, and columns for a.m. and p.m., rather than relying on memory while sleep-deprived and generally worn out.

I went to a Friends of Captain Awkward meetup yesterday morning: a couple of hours of pleasant conversation, including quite a bit about cats. I suggested to the organizer that if she is feeling cat-deprived, she could visit me and spend some time stroking and admiring Molly.

Somerville just put on an impressive fireworks show for Memorial Day, which we could see out our living room window. We were eating dinner when the fireworks started, and I put my soup spoon down and got up to watch the fireworks. Given how Somerville tends to do things, I was surprised that they had it on Memorial Day; the city's July 4th fireworks are usually in June.

I have yet another "explanation of benefits" ("this is not a bill") from Tufts Health Plan. This is for blood tests from April of last year. I still have the paperwork from Quest Diagnostics for this bill (we've been hanging onto documentation of medical expenses, in case of a possible tax deduction). I logged onto the health plan website, and this appears to be the third time they're trying to bill for this: last year they submitted the claim twice on the same day, and one was paid and the other rejected because it was a duplicate. I don't know whether I should call Tufts tomorrow, or wait and see if I receive a bill. (I have so far received three identical "explanations of benefits" for my visit to the hand doctor in January, but her office hasn't billed me for it.)

[personal profile] cattitude and I were feeling drained enough by the apartment-hunting process and uncertainty by the time we signed the lease last week that we have been taking a few days to not work on, or even talk about, the rest of what needs to be done for the move. We've been talking about this as "relaxing," but it's a loose value of "relaxing": in addition to walking and Scrabble, we've been keeping up with cooking and basic chores, and I've done a few hours of work on my current freelance project.

I colored my hair purple again this morning. It had mostly faded by last week, and I decided to see using the small bottle of "purple" coloring conditioner when I washed my hair a few days ago. Maybe I should have left it on longer, or maybe this is another aspect of the colors working differently on gray/white than bleached hair: the only visible effect was a bit of darkening. I threw that away, and applied the "blue"+"teal" mix that looks good on my hair.

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