[jechmu]

Another reason (which I wish I had known) to treat antibiotics as a last resort is Clostridium difficile (C. diff). In addition to killing the bad bacteria in your body, antibiotics will also kill the good bacteria in your gut. This in combination with exposure to C. Diff (rampant in US hospitals) is a very bad thing.

When the good bacteria in your gut is killed, it frees up real estate giving any present C. diff an opportunity to overgrow and wreak havoc. If this happens, the road to recovery can be very long. And to add insult injury it takes bleach to kill any C. Diff you happen to spread to surfaces in your home and this often results in patients re-infecting themselves repeatedly.

[DennisP]

I talked to the sellers at an estate sale, and found out the deceased, a lady in her 60s, had been killed by C. diff. Took about four days.