Lactobacillus GG. com -Meryl's Story Testimonial

Our small local hospital was unable to pinpoint the cause of her infection, though they insisted her blood indicated she was under a mighty onslaught from somewhere in her system. They admitted her for observation. Blood chemistries and radiographs were inconclusive. During the next four days, she was unable to eat anything but the smallest spoonful of bland food. When she did swallow anything, it soon came back up. The hospital tried valiantly to keep her hydrated and to fight the unknown infection with a cocktail of broad spectrum antibiotics. On the fourth day, her abdomen began to swell with a mass the size of a watermelon. The pain was nearly unbearable and she no longer knew her own children when we came to see her. Her doctor encouraged us to send her to a facility with more equipment. We sent her by ambulance that afternoon to the regional trauma center for further diagnosis.

Ten days passed, and Meryl continued to weaken. Contrary to her physician's expectations, her appetite did not come back. The diarrhea continued unabated and with a vengeance. Our doctor drew us aside and reluctantly admitted Meryl was not regenerating her digestive abilities, and he was at a loss to recommend a course of treatment. It seemed the surgery had indeed been a success, but the patient was in the process of dying. The very antibiotics that had saved her from peritonitis, had also killed every living friendly bacteria in her digestive tract, leaving her unable to digest food and immunologically crippled. What was worse, the antibiotics seemed unable to control the pathogenic bacteria she still suffered from no matter what combination was tried nor what dosage was given. He confirmed that she still had Clostridium dificile uncontrollably destroying her system. Finally, he recommended we take Meryl back to the surgical center to see if they could propose a morer successful course of action. He told us he feared her death was imminent. Sadly, we returned Meryl to the regional medical center 50 miles away, presumably to die. On her readmission, the staff at the regional center gave us a life expectancyof 3 to 7 days for Meryl and said there was nothing further they could do.

We had become exceedingly desparate.. We could see the deep-seated fatigue beginning to settle in Meryl. In her heart she felt she would never go home again and she said so again and again in her few lucid moments. We seized an opportunity, when all staff had left the room and they left her chart on her table, to read her chart We found she still was not receiving the Lactobacillus GG we had demanded, although all hospital personel had told us several times she was supposed to be receiving it. Meryl was still being supplemented only by Lactinex™ and that was unable to stabilize her digestive functions.

Because we love our mother so much and because we know that others love their family members as well, we felt we had to provide a place on the Web where the greatest number of people could read Meryl's story and know that there is a means of supplying what is needed by the body to regain intestinal health no matter what the health problem is, no matter what the doctors say.. Most physicians are still unaware of this simple supplement's remarkable benefits. Culturelle™ LGG has been proven in living tissue in the lab and in the lives of many individuals just like Meryl, to do just what it was designed to do. We want others to have the opportunity to obtain this remarkable supplement without having to undergo all the strife we encountered while trying to save our mother's life. We feel this was the reason for Meryl's remarkable journey,,,,,,,,

so others may know.

We watched worriedly as Meryl's body systems began to fail the summer of 1999. Her diabetes was brittle, making control of her blood sugar difficult. It was a red letter day whenever we could keep her blood sugar below 150 mg/dl. She grew progressively weaker as the months rolled by, plagued by periodic bouts with diarrhea and chronic bladder infections. We knew a problem was developing, but could not define it. Her doctors attributed these changes to her diabetes medications and old age. They told us not to worry. We watched her rapier wit cloud and grow silent as she struggled to make sense of simple everyday conversations. Her short term memory began to fail her more often than not. Over the short summer, confusion set in, the sort of dementia often attributed to old age. Her hearing began to fail and both eyes clouded with cataracts. This again was chalked up to "normal" wear and tear by the physicians at the local clinic she attended. She went from walking upright, to leaning on furniture, to using a walker and finally to weakness so profound she lay bedridden one day unable to rise. She had become incontinent and unable to control her bowel movements. Her heart was slowly failing. Respiratory distress caused a rattle with every inspiration. Finally, although she vehemently protested, we insisted she let an ambulance take her to the local hospital for what we all feared would be her last trip.

About six years ago, Meryl began a slow decline. She had already battled years of arthritis' crippling onslaught, a battle that had knotted her fingers and toes and made daily living a tiring exercise as it is for so many of our elderly. She had spent the last 15 years first nursing and caring for her mother-in-law until she passed away, then nursing our father through his last days with Parkinson's disease. By the time our father passed on, the stress had produced a full-blown case of Type II diabetes in Meryl and, unknown to us, the stress had also triggered a growth spurt in the Candida that had infested her system for years but lay silently in wait for just such an opportunity as this..

After a very long week, the surgeons pulled the drains, took Meryl to the surgery and removed the draining abcess. They cleaned her abdomen carefully, and resected her colon, removing the perforated, ulcer-ridden section that had failed her. Luckily, Meryl had enough tissue left to permit the two free ends of the colon to be reconnected and she was spared the complication of a colostomy. She was brought back to her room and her long, long recovery period began. Meryl continued to have bouts of vomiting and diarrhea, which at this point was thought by the trauma center staff to be a common after effect to such invasive surgery. At the end of the month, Meryl was returned to our local hospital for what should have been a smooth, uneventful recovery. We were not prepared for the problems that followed.

Meryl was placed on a week long program of antibiotics introduced directly through a pic line to a point in the large vessel just above her heart. She never had less than three antibiotics in her IV "cocktail", including but not limited to vancomycin, often known as the drug of last resort. Meryl was eating nothing at this point, sending her meals back untouched. She had no appetite and the very sight or smell of food nauseated her. She depended entirely on the fluids and vitamins dripping into her arm to maintain the thread of life. Two large drains were placed in her abdomen to relieve the pressure in the abcess into a bag and to buy time for the antibiotics to get the raging peritonitis and septicemia under control. The surgeon waited seven agonizing days to hopefully give her the best chance during the upcoming surgery. Her room was continually under quarrantine in an attempt to keep her C. deficile infection from spreading to other patients. (Hospitals and nursing homes all over the world have great difficulty controlling Clostridium deficile infections in debilitated patients. As in Meryl's case, Clostridium deficile is often resistant to all antibiotics.) At no point did the hospital lab detect the Candida and Klebsiella raging through her system, simply because hospital labs do not look nor do they routinely test for these types of bacterial overgrowth. Meryl continued to lose weight and become progressively weaker, though the drains did relieve the pain of the abcess somewhat. She was entirely bedridden at this point and losing weight rapidly. Meryl had lost 45 pounds at this point.

Throughout this time, what didn't come out the top passed without slowing from the bottom. Meryl had lost all bodily control. A raft of specialized tests were ordered along with radiographs, an MRI, and barium studies. The hospital's laboratory at the regional trauma center promptly diagnosed her with a rousing case of peritonitis complicated by a Clostridium deficile infection. The peritonitis had produced a large abcess the size of a watermelon from drainage passing through a ruptured ulcer in Meryl's colon. The staff bluntly told us they did not think Meryl would survive the proposed surgery, but that they had no choice. Meryl's only chance for survival was emergency surgey coupled with a mighty serving of very hot antibiotics to hopefully control the raging infection inside her.

At this point Meryl had lost 65 pounds since she entered the hospital, and she was no closer to getting well. In fact her body systems were now stressed to the point they were beginning to shut down one by one. Defeated, the physicians at the rehabilitative hospital finally agreed to submit the comprehensive stool analysis to the lab in North Carolina and to implement some of the supplements reccommended by our holistic physician. Instead of giving Lactobacillus GG, which we had specified, they insisted on continuing the Lactinex™ therapy. They also continued to give her vancomycin, although we requested repeatedly that she be taken off the antibiotic. The vancomycin not only was not working, we felt it was interfereing with her mind. She was finally given Saccharomyces boulardii (Florastor™), another probiotic, as well as other chemical treatments to stem the diarrhea It did not work. Meryl continued to suffer.

Meryl was examined and a comprehensive stool analysis was scheduled with the hospital staff to be sent to the Great Smokies Diagnostic Lab in Asheville, North Carolina. Our holistic physician then set up a supplement protocol to help Meryl digest her food and to stabilize her systems while waiting for the test results. The physicians at the hospital in charge of Meryl's case agreed to implement the protocol. Meryl was then transfered to a neighboring hospital facility that specialized in rehabilitation of severely injured patients. Unfortunately, there was a conflict between Meryl's new attending physicians on the rehabilitation hospital's staff and the consulting physician's wishes and the proposed digestive protocol was not implemented. The stool test was not given, unknown to us, for a period of 21 days. For those 21 days Meryl received still more daily doses of vancomycin and other drugs, even though two previous courses of vancomycin were not successful, in a futile attempt to conquer the diarrhea that was destroying her. Her mind was so damaged by the antibiotics during this time she had the understanding of a small child at best. She did not improve, but rather continued to lose ground. Finally the staff admitted they had no other options to try and that Meryl was no better.

We decided to find another doctor on our own, one more versed in functional medicine and in "alternative therapies". We hoped to persuade this individual to see Meryl on a consultative basis though she still remained in the hospital. Luckily, we found a physician near the medical center but at another hospital that was trained in holistic and alternative therapies and who understood digestive population dynamics. She agreed to attend Meryl on a special consultative basis and to use supplements, including LGG, to attempt to rebuild Meryl's damaged digestive system.

We began to anxiously scour the Web for some means to reestablish Meryl's intestinal bacterial populations before time ran out. We felt any action was better than no action. A flora transplant from one of Meryl's sons was proposed, but the physician at the regional center who specialized in this procedure was temporarily in Europe and Meryl could not wait. By the hand of Providence, we discovered several reports on a probiotic bacterium named Lactobacillus GG ( the "GG" for the two scientists that had a hand in its discovery). We were impressed with its remarkable properties and eagerly printed out the data and presented it to the internist on Meryl's case. The internist never even bothered to read the printouts. He was not open to "alternative therapies" even though he admitted he had no further options to pull from his regular bag of tricks. He told us they intended to wait to see if Meryl" regenerated" on her own. But he also admitted that regeneration would not be a likely outcome.

Meryl was placed in quarrantine and started on yet another course of Vancomycin in a vain attempt to "kill the bug". She was given Lactinex™, (a probiotic combination of Lactobacillus acidolphilus and Bifido bacterium), to try to reestablish some sort of friendly gut flora, but it produced no lasting results. IV therapy ran continuously into her arms to stave off the loss of salts and fluid. By this time, Meryl had lost over 55 pounds since she entered the hospital. Her skin was nearly transparent and cast a grayish pall on her features. The Candida in her system produced unusual swelling of her arms and one leg, swelling the hospital staff, still unaware of the Candida infection, were unable to explain.

During this journey Meryl had progressed from mild vaginal yeast infections on a rare basis, to periodic diarrhea, to leaky gut syndrome, to ulcerative colitis, to perforated intestines leading to peritonitis and septicemia, to antibiotic induced dysbiosis of the intestines so profound she was given a death sentence by three separate physicians in three separate hospitals , and all of it was turned around by a simple probiotic supplement....Culturelle™ Lactobacillus GG. We felt very blessed to have her survive and very blessed to have found such a remarkable product, a product so safe and yet so effective.

Meryl still has difficulty maintaining her own population of friendly GI bacteria, but supplying two capsules of Culturelle™ LGG a day has prevented any recurrence of any of the Candida, the Klebsiella, or any of the Clostridium deficile that nearly took her life. She routinely submits an annual comprehensive stool test to make sure she stays free of these pathogens as well as any others...The most important thing is that her recovery after all that time began with two small capsules of Culturelle™ LGG. Culturelle™ LGG possessed the strength to normalize her GI function in the face of raging infection and malnourishment, diabetes, antibiotic induced dysbiosis, and profound disability.

. Her mind has cleared and she has regained her zest for life. The Candida and Klebsiella now gone from her system cost her the sight in one eye due to macular degeneration induced by the stress she underwent and the hearing in one ear. But now she is healthier than she has been for 20 years. Her diabetes is well under control with an average daily blood sugar reading of only 95 mg/dl and her pescriptions have been reduced to two tablets of heart medication to aid a residual weakness her ordeal has produced in her circulatory system and one tablet of diabetic control medication a day. Today she eats anything she wants with no problem at all

The Culturelle™ LGG aggressively colonized the lining of her GI tract, stopping further deterioration and ulceration, permitting the tissue to heal and preventing further invasion of her other body systems by any pathogens wanting to pass through the gut wall into the blood stream. We also found that somehow with her transfering between facilities five times during the course of her acute illness, Meryl had been placed on the wrong diabetic tablet. She was singularly sensitive to this particular compound and that had contributed to her long-standing diarrhea and the pronounced gas pains she had suffered. While we were unaware of this snafu, the Culturelle™ LGG had totally relieved the unpleasant digestive side effects of this prescription error also. Once discovered, this error was also corrected. Culturelle™ LGG provides Meryl a protective measure even to this day as we supplement her daily to maintain her improved state of health.

When the results of the comprehensive stool test returned they identified a raging case of Candidiasis syndrome (Candida albicans and Candida glabrata), Klebsiella species and Clostridium deficile in Meryl. These pathogens were the culprits that caused all her problems. We began treatment with the appropriate herbs and supplements to rid her of these pathogens, supplements that were successful largely because of the stability rendered to her system by the presence of the Culturelle™ LGG we continued to give her daily.

As soon as it seemed obvious to the attending physicians that Meryl's stool would remain formed, Meryl was transferred to a nursing home near her home for another month's rehabilitation . Her muscles had been digested to a large extent by her body's attempts to survive leaving her wheelchair bound at first. She lost most of her hair during that time from the poor level of nutrition she had undergone during her ordeal. Her hair has since returned to its normal thickness and she has regained a good deal of her strength. Meryl had lost over 65 pounds of body weight by the time she finally was sent home on Thanksgiving day, 2000.

We began to secretly give two capsules of Culturelle™ LGG every other day to Meryl, whenever we could make the hundred mile round trip from home to see her. Only four days later, Meryl had formed semi-solid stools for thr first time in over four months and finally began her road to recovery in earnest. Four days on Culturelle™ LGG had accomplished what three months and a ton of treatments in the hospital from dozens of specialized physicians had not been able to accomplish. Her abdominal pains began to decrease and her appetite began to return. Four days on Culturelle™ LGG gave Meryl her life back and soon permitted her release after three long, long months in hospital and 13 courses of antibiotics had failed her. There now was light at the end of the tunnel.

We decided to take matters into our own hands and to purchase the Lactobacillus GG from the pharmacy ourselves. However, we soon found that no pharmacies in the area carried it. We tried to have one order it in, but the pharmacist refused to order it for us. No physicians in the area were recommending it and the pharmacy did not want to get "stuck" with product they felt they would not sell. As a last resort we contacted the US manufacturer for Culturelle™ LGG and told them of our desparate plight. They agreed to ship a small amount to us directly from their facility. We were ecstatic!

Checking her records again, we found Meryl was still not receiving the requested Lactobacillus GG. We could find no other product or probiotic that had been proven in living tissue to do what we knew needed to be done to save Meryl's life. We were told that if we couldn't get her GI tract stabilized , she would soon perforate her intestine again and this time she would not survive. She had no systemic resources left! We felt Lactobacillus GG had to be acquired from somewhere and the hospital seemed unwilling to

After we had a heated discussion with hospital staff they finally agreed to institute more of the protocol recommended by the consulting holistic physician and to at last submit, the needed comprehensive stool analysis to the lab. We had another sample kit sent to the hospital. (The first kit had been thrown away without our knowledge). We made sure the sample was properly sent off and waited to see if the new protocol of supplements, digestive enzymes, and vitamins would help Meyl. Meryl continued to receive Florastor (a supplement of Saccharomyces boulardii that is a friendly yeast and in some cases tends to normalize GI functions when dysbiosis is present). An additional two weeks passed with no improvement.