Diarrhea after long term use of antibiotics

[JTRN86]

I am a 43 year old health female.  I have been taking oral antibiotics for over 4 years for acne prescribed by a board certified dermatologist.  I would take one, it would work good for about a year, then we'd switch to a different one.  It would work for a while and then, again we would end up switching it.  My most recent antibiotic was minocycline. My stools changed to soft and then to diarrhea.  It took me about 3 months of diarrhea before I realized this was not going to get better so I went to my doctor and she took me off all antibiotics.  I do not have excessive numbers of bowel movements a day, but my daily BM is diarrhea.  My doc said this would take a good 3 weeks for my gut to get back to normal.  It has been over 3 weeks and I still have diarrhea.  Since going off the antibiotics I have had one normal stool.
My question is:  Should I give it more time or seek advise from my GP or a GI doc?  Would probiotics help?

[girlvet]

Definitely go in for C Diff testing - make sure they do three days in a row for Clostridium Difficile Toxins A/B.  Your GP would probably have more knowledge about this than your dermotologist too.  As CalGal said, there are very obvious symptoms of C Diff, but you just may be able to stop it early, if in fact this is what you have.  Best of luck to you.

[CalGal]

Probiotics will help. But in addition to that, go to your doc and ask for a test for C. diff just to rule out that possibility. You didn't mention any of the more obvious symptoms that one gets with C. diff, but if you've been on antibiotics for that long a period of time it's better to be safe than sorry.