Medical people- what's my husband got? (He's resisting going to the doctor to find out)

Where did he travel, what countries and areas?

He went all over the US and up into Canada. I’ll hurry and edit my question and put that part in.

He says he ate some pretty rare prime rib somewhere…

Was he in any bodies of water including rivers or lakes?

It might be just the change of water, flora and fauna in the water are different in different regions. Try yogurt or Acidophilus to get the gut running smooth. Keep an eye for elevated temperature and other body function changes. Prime rib has never gotten my stomach and I eat it almost raw.

I too would recommend some probiotics. Go to a supplement store or health food store and get a good one.

If it does not clear up, I strongly recommend a doctor who will culture his fecal matter and/or do blood tests.

Could be an infection of some sort. It’s normal to feel exhausted but give him time to recover and see how it goes after that.

Digestion is such a tempermental beast. It can get upset by so many little things, including a major change in routine and/or diet. I never feel digestively normal while traveling. Did your husband perhaps eat at rest stops often, because the food at those can really do a number on one’s gut. Even if he was eating well, “traveler’s diarrhea” is a commonly used term for a reason. I would bet he’ll be fine, but get him checked out if his symptoms don’t clear up soon after getting back to his usual routine.

He did some gold panning…

Thanks for the info. I’ll tell him.

He could have gotten a parasite from the water. If so, he will need to see a doctor to clear it up, it won’t go away by itself. My cousin was hospitalized with a parsite she got from swimming in the river. She lost a lot of weight and it took months for her to start feeling normal again.

Blood work, urinalysis, fecal analysis at the very least.

How old is he? Time for a colonoscopy yet?

More likely is bacterial or viral but a protazoan infection is possible. If you really want to scare him into getting checked out then google the symptoms of intestinal parasites – they include things like blindness and mental problems but the one that will strike fear into pretty much any man is hair loss.

@Lightlyseared LOL. I’ll do that. Right now he just wants me to leave him alone, but of course he wants me to listen to him complain. He’ll either get better or he won’t. MEN! Humph!

Have you looked him over to see if he has a bug bite, like a tick bite? He could have mild food poisioning or a stomach virus. Only way to tell is for him to get tested.

Good idea. We’ve already done the tick bite thing, (rocky mountain spotted fever) 20 years ago, although we never found the site of the bite or the rash, however the symptoms most matched that of Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. We had a dunce of a doctor who refused to run the necessary tests until the infection had gone underground many months later. Hubby lost 5 months of income and we spent thousands of dollars trying to figure it out. Symptoms then included intermittent low grade fever extreme exhaustion, and severe pain in the upper back of the neck where we think he might have been bitten, and elevated liver enzymes.

The health department even got involved because they maintained that anyone with elevated liver enzymes had to have hepatitis (which necessitated everyone in the house having shots) then they reconsidered and said it was Hep. C, then Hep D, and so on, until they said it was undetermined Hepatitis. O.o

He thinks his current symptoms are a remnant of whatever he had back then, because he’s never fully recovered. He also had a colonoscopy a few years ago when he had something and they never figured out what that was either.

Sigh.

He also likes to hike, and hikes all over. But as far as I know he’s not received a recent bite.

I’m dealing with stomach problems too! I was tested for parasites, and they didn’t find anything. I took Acidopholous that I got at Stop and Shop and it didn’t help. My symptoms at first was diarrhea, and after (for three months) just discomfort in my belly region after eating and lots of gas. I finally went back to the doctor, and I just started antibiotics (Ciprofloxacin) and a prescription-grade probiotic (Culturelle). They also did some blood work. It’s worth going to the doc! And if it’s not a parasite don’t wait three months to go back like I did, ask for the antibiotic right away.

@snowberry technically anyone with elevated liver enzymes does by definitiion have hepatitis (note the small h – this will become imortant in a moment), hepatitis is inflamation of the liver and anything that can damage the liver will cause inflamation and so hepatitis. You can get alcohol induced hepatitis, drug induced hepatitis, autoimmune hepatitis etc (I can think of another 9 or so causes that don’t involve viruses). The problem arises because some idiot called the group of viruses that can also cause hepatitis Hepatitis (note capital H there). From then on people then assumed (and not just laypeople but bloody medical professionals as well) that if you had hepatitis then you had Hepatitis.

@Lightlyseared Thanks so much. Now I understand. Regarding the hepatitis debacle, there’s nothing like the truth to set things straight.

I have met several people who believes they contracted Lyme disease from a source other than a tick (there never was a tick bite that they know of, or they never entered the woods or lived where the ticks live).