Beware of your antibiotic

Jeri Cortese is always in motion. The 51 year old is Director of Community Relations at St. Mary's Hospital in Amsterdam and a wife and mother.

"Bouts of diarrhea, just nothing would stay in and I mean nothing. A sip of water, juice, toast, nothing," said Jeri.

That was on a Thursday in August 2008. By the following Tuesday she was rushed to Albany Medical Center in critical condition. She had C-Difficile, C-Diff for short, a bacteria and the new, very nasty strain.

"But it seems to make a lot more toxin. The bacteria, this is, and because of that causes a lot of disease and lethality," said infectious disease specialist, Dr. Alan Sanders.

Eight days after her first symptoms, doctors had to remove most of her infected colon.

She would need a colostomy with the hope doctors could, eventually, reconnect her colon to her small intestine.

It would be more than a month before Jeri regained enough strength to go home.

So what is this Bacteria that nearly killed her?

"So the antibiotics are killing all sorts of bacteria that they have no intention of killing, but that's the fact of antibiotics. When a lot of those bacteria get killed, C-Diff rises to the fore front because it now can take over when all the other bacteria used to compete with it," says Dr. Sanders.

"That organism can form a spore, kind of like a cocoon and that's very difficult to kill," says Pat Streeter, a nurse at St. Mary's Hospital.

Hospitals isolate C-Diff patients and thoroughly sanitize the room they were in, even throwing away many items.

But, like MRSA, another bacteria, C-Diff is starting to crop up outside the hospital setting and it's showing resistance to many antibiotics used to treat it, and not everyone diagnosed was prescribed antibiotics.

Jeri wasn't, although she'd been under stress and that can weaken your immune system.

"Can I get it at the gym, can I get it at the supermarket, can I get it at my kids school? No, it's not that easily transmissible. It's not like MRSA we know is, casual contact," says Dr. Sanders.

So how do you protect yourself?

Hand washing with soap and water, as C-Diff isn't killed by hand sanitizers.

Don't needlessly take antibiotics and if prescribed, eat yogurt with live cultures, probiotics or acidophelous, which comes in pill form. This puts good bacteria into your gut to keep the C-Diff at bay.

There's no way of knowing if you've been colonized with C-Diff, meaning it's in your intestines, just hanging out.

As for Jeri, the poster above her desk kept her on track to get well.

"One of the most important things for me was attitude, wanting to live," says Jeri.