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.