help

[Adplatt]

I apologize in advance for the length of this petition. I find it would be extremely difficult to discuss this until I can first divulge all the information involved. Twelve months ago I slept with a young woman twice. I did not use protection. After a few days I began to experience an intense itching in my anal region. This itching was most pronounced at night and still is. After a few months of failed self-diagnoses I went to see my family physician. My family physician diagnosed me with candidiasis and prescribed clotrimazole to be applied twice a day to the infected region. After weeks of using this religiously along side pads for hemorrhoids to reduce inflammation I thought I was experiencing success due to the burning sensation in my anal region. Unfortunately, I was unable to rid myself of the problem. Over the course of the next few months, the problem progressively got worse. I began to experience itching under my arm pits, in my nose and ears, and tingling sensations on the bottom of my feet. Virtually, anywhere on my skin that was warm or moist became a place for potential itching, and an acute itching at that. Furthermore, I began to have mental symptoms. I became forgetful(very forgetful). I would put something down one minute and leave the house without it. I would reenter the house again, pick it up, put it down again before I left, and leave without it again. Never before having experienced anything like this(particularly because it occurred on multiple occasion) I knew something was wrong. My general health also began to decline. My eyes always felt itchy, and as if pressure was pushing on them, not to mention my sight has been clearly damaged whether temporarily or permanently. My throat felt the same way. It was not really sore, it was merely uncomfortable. I got sick with the flu and other like ailments. I began to research Candidiasis and naturally I came across online forums of people who experienced much of my own symptoms. Naturally, I had a certain degree of skepticism about many of the claims these people made, some of them doctors. The symptoms of what they called "systemic Candidiasis" while fitting my own symptoms almost entirely seemed too broad to be a viable medical diagnosis. Most doctors shared my view on this, but it was not really my view. My view was that it was too easy for people to be clumped into this category. My view was not that I was not suffering from the problem. There was something very, very wrong with me. I never felt like myself. It was a very startling experience. My motor skills began to suffer along with my mental skills. The world felt almost surreal. I always felt like I was on some sort of drug, which the theory of metatoxin release by the fungus actually, sort of explained rather well. My obsession with curing this disease arose gradually because none of the usual treatments that doctors prescribed seemed to work. I went back to my doctor who ultimately told me that some people have this their whole lives(which was naturally completely unacceptable to me), and said the yeast was probably attacking my oil and/or sweat glands. He sent me to an infectious disease specialist. This doctor, however, was not as diligent or committed as my family physician. She did not seem to take me seriously. This is likely due to the fact that most of my symptoms are a personal account. There is very little physical to support them. A little bit of dry skin and irritation in the anal area seems to be the extent of it to the problem for most skeptics with high standards of proof. In fact, she prescribed me a very weak regiment of Fluconazole for one week, 100 mg a day. I knew in advance this was not enough. Despite imploring her to give me something more she declined arrogantly. This began my disillusionment with Western medicine. Considering myself an individual with keen insights and rationalistic tendencies this weighed heavily on me, but nobody should have to live the way I have. After her treatment did not work I began to accumulate all the information I could on the topic. I began to modify my diet first. This was and still is the most successful treatment for my problems. What started as limiting carbs and sugars, gradually progressed to the extreme. I actually felt best on a full blown Atkins(near 0 carb) diet(first, most intense week). My symptoms would drop to near zero, and as long as I stayed away from things like caffeine and yeast I felt almost healthy, despite some strength loss and weight loss which is of course somewhat disappointing to someone of my build and fitness. This is when I actually put a connection together between my friend's dog and myself. My friend's dog had been scratching his paws(to the point he was bleeding) and passing out, perhaps from the yeast feeding on the sugar in his blood. My friend brought him to the vet and they diagnosed him with a fungal problem. They prescribed ketoconazole and topical Clotrimazole(sound familiar). The dog eventually recovered. Unfortunately, I have not. I still can not dismiss this as a coincidence. I went also to a dermatologist a few months later, but she too, was no help. My life was absolutely unbearable, but I never lost my resolve. I sought out different methods and advice. I followed the pattern of holistic medicine. I damaged the fungus by not feeding it for a few months, and ordered medicine from overseas(Nystatin, supplemented with Griseofulvin which has been shown to improve the efficacy of some anti-fungals even if it is not effected against Candida species). Lastly, I plan to repopulate my digestive tract with probiotics(which I have tried by themselves, along with various other herbal remedies). This was of course, after I had supplemented my diet with month long regiments of Fluconazole(high dose, 500-600 mg a day) and Itraconazole which did not rid me of the infection despite aiding the drugs in various ways by behavior modification. I have thus far on the nystatin had some considerable success in beating-the-problem-down.

[auntiejessi]

First, let me say that no one on this forum is a doctor.  If you want a doctor's opinion, you have to post in our expert's forum.  You will also have to really edit this, as there is a limit on how long your post can be.

You could be doing some severe damage to your liver with your meds - fluconazole, even at low doses, can cause liver injury, as can nystantin.  Hepatic injury can cause symptoms like you are describing.  

I am not saying something isn't wrong with you.  I don't know what it is - nor will any doctor without some testing.  Your doctor can do a culture of the area and find out if there is yeast present.

Even doctors who believe in the systemic yeast issue (I'm not a doctor but I think there is something to it), will not treat with the doses of fluconazole that you have been taking.

I am all for being your own best advocate, but not to the point where it hurts you.

I'm quite sure you won't like my answer, and that's fine - that's your right, but just don't harm yourself when you are trying to help yourself.

[Adplatt]

She can no longer have intercourse as she experiences too much pain, and her vagina is constantly dripping with who knows what.) This is absolutely no exaggeration. She has repeatedly been to doctors and they have yet to diagnose her. They think she may have endometriosis, although I suspect something is being missed here. There is certainly something being missed in my case, as doctors keep telling me I am fine. Obviously, I have a much decreased social life. I will not have sex with anyone, not even with protection at this point, until I am cleared of this dreadful illness. The price of this loss of pleasure in my life is extremely upsetting(not to mention my lover having left me for it, and understandably being that I got her sick and the trust issues in this).The psychological effects of this illness, however, are too extreme for any rational observer to overlook. I told my girlfriend I might infect her with whatever it is I had. When, ultimately, she became infected, I told her how to control it but she wouldn't listen. When she came to pick me up and I was driving her home, she attempted to jump out of the car while it was moving at 75 mph. Let me add, this is a young lady with no history of mental illness, depression, or suicide. In fact, from my view point she is in many ways averse to experiencing these disorders given her overall psyche and mental constitution. I told her what it would do to her, as it had done to me. Nonetheless, like my normal self, I maintain my resolve and write this letter as stoically as I always do. Now, back to the call. My x-girlfriend informed me that she had spoken to a young man's sister who had slept with the same girl I had contracted this problem from one year prior, and that he had himself contracted gonorrhea(adding a new possibility to the equation, that this either was not a yeast problem at all or that the gonorrhea may have been enabling the yeast to take hold and fight off what I was throwing at it). He had also been successfully treated for it. I was relieved. Perhaps this was the diagnosis, the cause of my itching, my many health problems. I drove directly to the ER. The doctors, however, were not convinced. I had not tested positive for gonorrhea on the urine samples I had given to an STD testing clinic months earlier. They would therefore not treat me. They told me to get off the Nystatin--- what I actually predicted given their overall arrogance, even though I am not treating myself any differently than a doctor might, and furthermore they did absolutely nothing for me. This time their stupidity baffled me. I told them I was exposed twice to the disease, that I had contracted something from the girl, yet still it was not enough for these people. They said I would damage my liver if I stayed on the Nystatin. That was the help they offered me! I, however, am not so worried about this. I take amazing care of my body. I do not drink, smoke, or do drugs(a 22 year old college student might I add). I have not for years. I would not be on these drugs unless I was fully aware that they were helping me or at least making my life more tolerable. I find it risible that these people protect their anti-biotic arsenal when I am seriously ill, yet they hand this stuff out like candy to people with colds. There is hardly any justifiable reason not to just hit me with doxycline or a cephalosporin, just in case. It is not uncommon for my incredible health to disguise problems I have from being recognized by doctors. I am not even going to go into the many times doctors have told me I am fine when I haven't been. Once, I gave a girl I was with pneumonia, after I had been coughing for two months straight. I avoided going to the doctor, until my father finally forced me to go. The doctor told me I was absolutely fine, even after I told him my girlfriend whom I had given this problem too had just been diagnosed with pneumonia after a chest x-ray showed this! I had to beseech him to give me antibiotics which ultimately cured me.  I am in good health otherwise. There is hardly a risk of damage to me or my internal organs. Again, at the ER, another experience with Western doctors and another failure to diagnose me or help me in any way. I do not discount the possibility that I may be experiencing some sort of hypersensitivity to a less serious medical condition that many experience, like a yeast infection in the anal area that is not was widespread as I suspect it is. Nonetheless, I am not willing to live with these problems. Not if my life has to be like it was prior to me taking proactive measures to attack the problems and the symptoms. I just will not do it. I will go to any extreme to eradicate this problem. It is worth it to me. I wish I had some doctors to guide me, to support me, to monitor me. I know I have some condition, it is simply what it is that evades me and it seems everyone else. I can not even get a doctor to acknowledge this. Instead, they are offended that I have found it necessary to help myself since they seem unable or unwilling to do anything for me. If they were in my place, they would see who and what is crazy, me or the medical establishment. Obviously I will be importing cefixime and treating myself with a single dose given its efficacy against Gonorrhea. Nonetheless, I would like your professional opinion on what it is I could be suffering from and what my course of action should be. Please try to refrain from being overtly critical of my behavior. It really is tedious. Try to delimit your responses to what it is you think I have and what I should do, not what I shouldn't. When a doctor shows me that he has any idea what he is doing or what he is dealing with, I will begin to disregard my own position and support his as he is the expert, but until I can get someone qualified to actually pay attention to me I have no other option but to pay attention to myself and think as hard as I can about what I can do, even with  my very limited qualifications for doing so. There is something wrong with me. If any doctor attempts to dispute this, I will simply stop listening immediately. I am an introverted and intelligent individual. I know when their is a serious disequilibrium in my body. To attempt to convince me otherwise is madness.

[Adplatt]

That is to say, despite some itching, I feel fairly good because of the extremes I am willing to go. Typically, however, after a few weeks of coming off the diet my hair begins to itch, my anus begins to itch and my body begins to tingle as if the fungus is reawakening. I am convinced that my hair is thinning as the result of these problems I have(began occurring long before diet modification, malnutrition therefore can be ruled out). There was absolutely no evidence of my hair thinning prior to contracting this problem which was, without question, contracted from this young woman during sexual intercourse(she did also spend significant time around the dog might I add, in case you sought a connection. I too also experience light headedness and after being off the diet(not on it!) I sometimes feel as if I am ready to pass out, which is a strange experience for me to say the least). I feel like I have aged ten years, although right now, hitting myself with 500 mg of Nystatin a day, consistently being on the diet, which I really can't come off of for more than a few days or two weeks at a time, I, again, feel OK. I do not feel like myself, but I feel OK. That is more than I can say for most days while I have had this problem. Typically when I treat the problem topically or douse it in anti-perspirants, which I often do for months at a time, within days I can feel the fungus contract into the anal region and away from the rest of my butt, in order to preserve moisture. It is easily recognizable and even understandable for a fungus to do this. Now after being to three doctors, I received a call the other day from my x-girlfriend(who by the way left me thanks to me getting her sick and the issues stemming from my illness.