Imagine this nightmare: you get into a near-fatal car accident and survive, only to find yourself battling for your life once more after a bacterial infection reaches your colon.
That's what happened to 20-year-old Kaitlin Hunter, who suffered a car crash in June 2011 that left her with a fracture to her lower spine, a lacerated liver and colon, and all 10 toes broken. That wasn't the worst of it, though, and her condition was about to get much worse!
After she returned home to Georgia she felt "extremely bad stomach pain" and was diagnosed with clostridium difficile, a severe infection and inflmmation of the colon.
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Following her car accident, she was on antibiotics but in spite (or because) of them, her colon became infected, causing severe stomach pain, diarrhea, and vomiting. She lost 40 pounds and plummeted to 85 pounds, which on her 5-foot-7-inch frame was a dramatic loss.
After nine rounds of antibiotic treatments in hopes of curing the C. diff, Kaitlin faced the risk of being one of the 14,000 people that the infection kills in the U.S. every year, according to the Centers for Disease Control or Prevention. That's when doctors decided to take a new approach and do a new treatment known as a "fecal matter transplant", which is done to help introduce new bacteria from a healthy donor to help fight off the C. diff.
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Kaitlin's mom donated one of her stools, the hospital diluted it and her doctor pumped the "foreign fecal matter" right into Kaitlin's colon, according to CNN.com. And she was cured!
Apparently it was a pretty sure-fire bet, though, since a study published back in March reported a 91 percent cure rate after just one poop transplant and a 98 percent cure rate if it's combined with another round of antibiotics. I'm pretty impressed (and kind of grossed out) by the new procedure–but more than that, I'm happy that Kaitlin's mom was able to come to the rescue and save her daughter. And now she's healthy all thanks to Mami! It's nice to see the happy ending, isn't it?
Image via Kaitlin Hunter
