A very good friend of mine who has no GI issues went to Costa Rica for a week on vacation and spent the entire week in a hospital with campylobacter food poisoning after eating undercooked chicken. It may be a while before you are back to normal. Most important thing is staying hydrated because if you are expelling lots of fluids as my friend was you have to rehydrate. It could take another week but drink plenty of fluids.

I'd contact your GI doc about the appropriate antibiotic for you. With a C. diff history I would be cautious about Cipro too. But, you don't want food poisoning to run amok either. This can easily snowball into a real problem. I agree that hydration is a critical issue.

Jan

Hi Trailorparkhero, 

im in the same boat, 13 days now with this awful infection! Just wondering how you are doing and has it cleared up? Did you go with antibiotics in the end ? 

My GI doctor's assistant ended up leaving me a message about also sending a script for Cipro. I mentioned my fear of getting C.Diff again and they changed the script to flagyl. Communication towards the end was mostly through voice mail to me and messages to the assistant. So they didn't know about the campylobacter which is bad on my part. I know...  Either way after the first day of antibiotics output slowed way down, consistency was more normal and I had enough energy to function. Things are pretty much back to normal now.  I'm almost done with the week long dose of antibiotics.  

Claire, did you also get a stool test? Hopefully your Dr is keeping tabs on you. Does it seem like you're making any improvement? I usually try to avoid antibiotics, but I really didn't want to continue the suffering. It didn't really seem like the stool consistency / output was improving after two weeks. 

Hello, I'm so glad the Flagyl has helped you! It has taken 14 days of pain and literally losing so much fluids through watery diarrhea.. I've gone to ER three times for a check up and fluids but just been mainly drinking rehydration salts at home. Yes it was dx via stool sample. God it's been a miserable dose!! They were about to give me Erythromycin but my GI doc said wait as its a self limiting infection, and he really tries to avoid antibiotics with me.. Then today it seems to have really improved, finally! Still not perfect, still some pain but way better. I won't be totally relaxed until a month has passed as apparently there can be nasty complications from this bug to nerves and joints and Cipro that poison has already worked its magic on me in these areas in the past , don't need any more compounding issues. Hope it's onwards and upwards for you from here with it. It will take a little while to get that strength and nutrition back up I reckon ...

My son had campylobacter last summer and lost 6 pounds in less than a week. It was awful. Cipro made him better.