Feeling somewhat better but still not 100%. Haven’t taken the antibiotics at this stage (I put them in the fridge)- want to talk it through more with the doctor.

Have been getting to bed early and having good long nights’ sleep. Sleep definitely seems to be good for tummies.

Keeping off the handfuls of fresh mulberries and also a bit off bread. I emailed C. about the low-fructose diet but haven’t had a reply yet. Definitely want to follow it up.

This morning I want to try to get hold of a ‘[url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gut_flora]good germs[/url]’ replacement for the bowel flora I would have lost with the Augmentin and get that rebalanced first up before taking any more antibiotics. [url=http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/articles/article/jemimastocktoncolumn1.htm/]Probiotics[/url] is what they are called. [url=http://www.sciencedaily.com]Great website[/url] with a lot of good articles on gut flora

I’m definitely rattled by reading all the stuff people write about diverticulitis. It is a mean baby.

I did notice that all the websites I looked at were very ‘pro-antibiotics’. On Google I had to skip to about page 10 just to get past the major ads for the main antibiotics. Then the pages seemed almost as if the discussion could be a good discussion as long as it encouraged you to take your antibiotics. For example you might modify your fibre intake but have a script for antibiotics from your doctor so you could start taking them as soon as you got an attack.

I didn’t find any mention at all of replacing the good gut flora that the antibiotics kill. While I’m sure it is out there it is rather remarkable by it’s absence because this is such a serious problem with antibiotics generally. And the good gut flora play such an important part in our metabolism and health.

From the websites it was also clear that the surgery involved cutting out a section of the bowel (not closing up a diverticuli). The people who had had the operation done clearly regarded it as absolutely horrific. Some faced further operations down the track and were appalled at the idea.