Friday, June 3, 2011

Any guesses?

Well, as I've written on my life blog I've had digestive issues for several years now which was believed to be with all the symptoms very similar to Pseudomembranous Colitis, and specifically since last October when the whole system went south and never has returned to any sense of normal.

And all the GI specialists have said after the tests found everything "normal", not colitis of any form, was that, "It's IBS, age and diet. Get used to it." I suggested it was another abnormal normal bacteria, a lesser known one of the thousands in the gut. Like normal can't be abnormal, which is what Pseudomembranous Colitis is, except it's the only one known with an antibiotic to treat it, but not cure it.

Well, to show them I have photos now. So that's the Le Quiz de Jour, any ideas of what these are? Hints? Well, one, they're not food and stuff, and two, they're not supposed to be there. And so on to the images.

This is a host, or so it appears. The nodules extend out from the body of the host on tenticles which develop into the ones below.



And this is what they are fully developed.



All I can figure is they're a mass of something, bacteria or what I don't know, so the lines are open for comments or suggestions, including the obvious, "Yuck!"

4 comments:

  1. Okay... YUCK!

    I know, I'm so helpful. :) The first thing I'd want to do is see if we were working with something alive, you know? Maybe see if it grows in petri dish?

    I suspect that there are far more parasite type infections people get than we realize. And they can be hard to detect even if they are looking at stool samples under a microscope.

    Which reminds me... got a microscope? If not, go buy one, look at it under a microscope. If you find legs, antennae, mandibles, etc - it's a parasite.

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  2. BTW, I don't think any of the flora that lives naturally in ones digestive tract is supposed to be visible to the naked eye.

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  3. Actually, you're right, it's only supposed to be seen by lab technicians, but these are bacterial in nature. They've done a variety of tests and biospsies already and everything appears normal, which is the issue, when normal is abnormal, meaning the body can't regulate the normal bacteria in the gut.

    Normally bacteria grows until the body recognizes and regulates the growth, but some bacteria become immune to the body's controls for a variety of reasons, often overuse or abuse of anti-biotics, which in my case was for Rheumatic Fever. All the symptoms are there for this condition but the bacteria isn't a known, at least by the specialists I've seen.

    I was just curious of others have ideas what to tell the specialist who seem numb to do more than prescribe conventional wisdom, namely live with it, which is why the photos. And yes, it is yuck.

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  4. An update to this entry. These tissues masses are now thought to be blood clots from a bleeding small intestine, aggrevated by some foods. But the problem still remains, the lab doesn't analyze for these but dismisses them as unidentifiable tissue masses. And without that determination, I can't get more tests unless I can get a gastroentrologist to agree and order more tests.

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