Professor
Gold Member
- Joined
- Apr 6, 1999
- Messages
- 3,433
I love this forum, though I lurk and learn more than anything. Thought I'd share my current experience with Giardia with you all.
Great weight-loss tool if anyone's interested. Just do like I did, accidentally ingest some streamwater and boom... You're on your way from being 175lbs to 145lbs inside 7 weeks! Actually, I don't endorse Giardia as a weight loss method. It sucks.
Turns out, I got Giardia last June (2008) and it went undiagnosed; prolly got it drinking some funky unsuccessfully-filtered water while camping/hiking. I had symptoms (which were diagnosed as spastic colon last year) that lasted about 6 weeks and subsided last year.
Fast-forward to mid-March 2009. I started having symptoms way more severe, and went to a GI specialist who, based on the symptomology, made an initial assessment of ulcerative colitis pending labs. Apparently in reality, the Giardia underwent a sort of incubation period during the symptoms' submission, and it came back triply worse and with a vengence. It was officially diagnosed as Giardia two weeks ago today (on a Tuesday) after the labs came back and the GI's RN reviewed them.
I've since been on a ten-day course of Flagyl, a pretty tough antibiotic, and found out last week that my blood labs indicated significant iron and Vitamin D deficiency secondary to the diagnosis. I don't doubt the iron deficiency, as I've lost a significant amount of blood via diarrhea during March 2009's bout with the bug. So now I'm on Vitamin D supplements FOREVER (starting with 50k iu's for a month via prescription, decreasing to OTC 2k iu's every month thereafter for the rest of my life), and have to go back for repeat labs this week to determine if I need another round of antibiotics and iron supplements. I'm 36 years old, in great physical shape, and it stinks that I'll have to carry around a pillbox with me!
Giardia, according to my layman's research, is a (typically-not always) waterborne parasite that if untreated will go dormant, which it did for me, and come back in the form of cysts along the walls of your lower intestines. They, I'm assuming in the process of getting what nourishment they need to survive, interrupt your body's absorption of fat. So again, weight loss is the dark and unwanted lining to the already dark cloud, not to mention the extreme abdominal cramping and urgent, urgent, I mean urgent needs to use a restroom. I've had to tell people in public restrooms that, sorry, I need to go worse than you. Talk about embarrasing.
Anyhow, my point I suppose is say to you, my outdoor peers, avoid Giardia if you can! If you start having diarrhea and abdominal cramping post an outdoor excursion, consider Giardia a suspect.
Hopefully I'll kick this and be done in another month or so, because man alive it sucks.
Thanks for hearing my sad story! Best to all.
Professor.
Great weight-loss tool if anyone's interested. Just do like I did, accidentally ingest some streamwater and boom... You're on your way from being 175lbs to 145lbs inside 7 weeks! Actually, I don't endorse Giardia as a weight loss method. It sucks.
Turns out, I got Giardia last June (2008) and it went undiagnosed; prolly got it drinking some funky unsuccessfully-filtered water while camping/hiking. I had symptoms (which were diagnosed as spastic colon last year) that lasted about 6 weeks and subsided last year.
Fast-forward to mid-March 2009. I started having symptoms way more severe, and went to a GI specialist who, based on the symptomology, made an initial assessment of ulcerative colitis pending labs. Apparently in reality, the Giardia underwent a sort of incubation period during the symptoms' submission, and it came back triply worse and with a vengence. It was officially diagnosed as Giardia two weeks ago today (on a Tuesday) after the labs came back and the GI's RN reviewed them.
I've since been on a ten-day course of Flagyl, a pretty tough antibiotic, and found out last week that my blood labs indicated significant iron and Vitamin D deficiency secondary to the diagnosis. I don't doubt the iron deficiency, as I've lost a significant amount of blood via diarrhea during March 2009's bout with the bug. So now I'm on Vitamin D supplements FOREVER (starting with 50k iu's for a month via prescription, decreasing to OTC 2k iu's every month thereafter for the rest of my life), and have to go back for repeat labs this week to determine if I need another round of antibiotics and iron supplements. I'm 36 years old, in great physical shape, and it stinks that I'll have to carry around a pillbox with me!
Giardia, according to my layman's research, is a (typically-not always) waterborne parasite that if untreated will go dormant, which it did for me, and come back in the form of cysts along the walls of your lower intestines. They, I'm assuming in the process of getting what nourishment they need to survive, interrupt your body's absorption of fat. So again, weight loss is the dark and unwanted lining to the already dark cloud, not to mention the extreme abdominal cramping and urgent, urgent, I mean urgent needs to use a restroom. I've had to tell people in public restrooms that, sorry, I need to go worse than you. Talk about embarrasing.
Anyhow, my point I suppose is say to you, my outdoor peers, avoid Giardia if you can! If you start having diarrhea and abdominal cramping post an outdoor excursion, consider Giardia a suspect.
Hopefully I'll kick this and be done in another month or so, because man alive it sucks.
Thanks for hearing my sad story! Best to all.
Professor.
