Fecal Transplants Saved My Life After I Almost Died of C. diff

After coming so close to death, I’ve learned to appreciate everything I got.

July 12, 2024

Minnie Hatch poses for two separate photos wearing a red scarf over her shoulders and a black dress with white lace.

Minnie Hatch, 29, from Salt Lake City, had painful stomach cramps, and other symptoms for months before finding out she had Clostridioides difficile, or C. diff. These bacteria can grow out of control after a course of antibiotics, causing bloody diarrhea and sometimes serious damage to the intestines. Since 2015, she has had dozens of debilitating and life-threatening recurrences and needed three fecal transplants, which involves receiving poop from a donor via colonoscopy to help restore healthy bacteria in the colon. Here’s her story, as told to senior health writer Katie Camero.

My symptoms started about 10 years ago. I was 19 years old and working with an ob-gyn at the time who was helping me deal with stomach cramps, abnormal uterine bleeding, diarrhea, and vomiting. My symptoms kept being chalked up to polycystic ovary syndrome (which I was diagnosed with at age 13), but I started to feel much worse, so she referred me to a GI specialist. We worked through the basic stuff: Don’t eat so much sugar, drink less caffeine, get more sleep. But none of these things helped the fact that I truly felt like I was dying; I couldn’t get out of bed and frequently had to call out of work. This went on for months, until my doctor eventually looked at me and said, “I think I know what it is, but you’re just so young.” So he finally ordered a test and his suspicions were correct: I had C. diff.

I took two different types of antibiotics (the typical treatment for C. diff), with no success, before my insurance agreed to pay for a new one that had just come onto the market. That medication was life-changing. I actually went back to work and got married that year. But that’s when things took a turn for the worse.

I’ve been prone to infections my whole life, which meant I grew up taking an usual amount of antibiotics for UTIs, ear infections, sinus infections, you name it—and still do. There have only been three times in a decade, all of them in the last year, that I’ve taken antibiotics that did not result in me getting C. diff. Like many other health conditions, C. diff doesn't discriminate. It doesn’t care how old you are, what you look like, or what you’re planning for your future. There's so many things that theoretically go into the classic why me, but at the end of the day, it is me. This is my life and this is what I have to deal with.

I ended up needing my first fecal microbiota transplant (FMT) in 2016. It was such a new procedure at the time that the FDA still considered it entirely experimental. I had to find my own donor and bring a blender (yes, it’s what you’re thinking) because the hospital couldn’t risk using their own equipment and spreading the infection. Not to mention my doctor was one of only two in my state who even knew how to perform a FMT at the time. Unfortunately, the procedure only gave me relief for about two months. I eventually lost my job and was just struggling to keep my head above water.

About a year later, I needed a second FMT, but thankfully it was more sophisticated that time around because there was more research to support it. Although it helped me feel better, I went on to have several more C. diff recurrences until my most recent and severe one in 2021. I went through my usual rounds of antibiotics, but when I eventually needed another FMT, the doctors refused to perform it unless I was in active sepsis because of the COVID pandemic.

I wasn’t sleeping. I wasn't eating. I was vomiting all the time. At this point I had spent thousands of dollars and literal years of my life just trying to stay alive, and my infections just kept getting worse as the years went on. My 4-year-old son was literally watching me die. My doctors told me it was time to make my end of life preparations. But I was so young and had a child who depended on me, so I refused—and then kept fighting.

I changed the way I eat and exercise. I sought treatment for my childhood and medical trauma. And I became an advocate for the Peggy Lillis Foundation, a nonprofit C. diff awareness organization, because I desperately needed some support. I have made some of my most meaningful relationships through this community, which I believe have saved my life—and given me an avenue to help others voice the very real struggle that comes with something that’s so stigmatized. Advocating for myself has changed everything about the way I view myself, the world around me, and how I want to live my life. I got so close to death that I live every moment appreciating what I've got.

I'm now three years free of C. diff, which is the longest I've ever gone without an infection in my adult life. I’m not entirely sure why that’s the case, but one thing I do know is that within that time, I’ve shifted my focus and started to prioritize my needs, first and foremost.

My biggest piece of advice for anyone out there who might be dealing with C. diff is to speak up because your concerns are so valid. If I had listened to my gut from the beginning and trusted that something was very wrong with me, maybe I wouldn’t be living how I do now, in constant fear of another recurrence.

Don’t get me wrong—you’re literally shitting yourself to death with C. diff, so of course no one wants to talk about that! But connecting with people who really understand me and finding my voice in the process has given me the space to realize that I am still a worthy human being, even if I have a condition that might be a little gross sometimes.