Why do I have chest pain with bloody stool?

Pseudomonas pneumonia cultured in stool?

• I recently have been experiencing chronic diarrhea with bile acid discharge at times. This discharge is a thick, yellow, mucus type acid that burns really bad. I have seen the doc and he ran several test which I just received the results today. I had an upper GI series, blood work, chest xray, urinalysis, and stool samples examined. All of which came back ok besides the blood and stool samples. I have an elevated white blood cell count and the stool sample cultured pseudomonas pneumonia. My symptoms include severe pain in my right upper side just under my rib cage, bile acid discharge, diarrhea, lose of appetite, nausea and the pain worsens when I take breathes. I do not however have a fever. The doctor did not really have an answer for me however and put me on an antibiotic thinking an infection of the gut related to pseudomonas pneumonia cultured in the stool. From my understanding though this is abnormal to have this cultured and seems to be a guess shot. I have not been in the hospital lately and in relatively good health for an 24/m besides hypothyroidism. Is there something that we may be possibly missing? Or has anyone heard of pseudomonas pneumonia cultured in the stool? I really appreciate any help you may be able to lend.

• Answer:

  The pseudomonas infection could be the reason you have the diarrhea, actually. It's also not that unusual to culture in the stools, although the folks you culture it in have usually been patients in the hospital. Pseudomonas is a pretty common critter, and you can find it in soil, water, and on vegetation of all sorts. It can also be a sign that you have a immune problem, because as a rule it doesn't cause healthy people problems in the gut. It does cause urinary tract infections, and it can cause a pneumonia- though again, there are usually other things involved to set you up for that. We've had patients with it cultured in the stool, usually a post-operative infection- although I did once have a pediatric patient with diarrhea caused by it which they thought came from contaminated dirt. It was a small child who liked to play in the sandbox and dig in the garden with mom. I think you will probably not ever really know exactly where you came in contact with your infection, although you can consider your particular lifestyle and history. If you want to help eliminate it from your environment now, you would just do well to do some serious housecleaning using just about any disinfectant made. You need to pay particular attention to places that get damp or moist, like the sink, refrigerator, and in the bathroom just about all over. Take real care after a trip to the bathroom, and consider a bleach tablet for the toilet tank. Be sure to wash your hands well after going to the bathroom, and before you prepare food or eat. Carefully wash all your produce before you eat it as well, even stuff that claims it was already washed- like the bagged salads. While you are on the antibiotics, be sure you cut the dairy products out of your diet as well. Once your antibiotic is finished, you would really do best to eat a carton or two of live culture yogurt each day for a couple days before you go back on dairy. It also would help if you took a pro-biotic supplement for a bit to help replace the good bacteria in your gut, and help keep those numbers up. An infection in the gut means there is a disruption of the numbers, and the bad guys took over. So it's important to change that. First with the antibiotic to wipe out the invader, and then with diet needed to replace the good ones. Hope you feel better.