Susan Griffith

by Susan Griffith

In the summer of 2012, thinking about parasites, I had a fecal test done at Quest Diagnostic in Flourtown that came up negative. I suspected I’d picked up something from a 65-year-old homeless man, Stanley Packard, who slept under a piece of heavy plastic in a wooded place near Cresheim Valley Road and Germantown Avenue.

He was there for about four years among his own trash, empty bottles of Vodka and utter filth. He stunk, was totally incontinent and therefore drenched in his own urine and excrement. Locals may recall this grey-haired, bearded lanky man who panhandled regularly at the Chestnut Hill Starbucks.

Whether he was a successful songwriter, as he claimed, I never knew, but once cleaned up and comfortable and eating a meal with me, he was enjoyable. He was smart and cultured, but he drank a bottle of vodka every night. In his years here, walking up and down Germantown Avenue, he felt accepted, especially by many women on the Hill who helped him along in various ways.

I started helping Stanley when I noticed in the summer of 2012 that his health was going downhill. His walk had become a shuffle, due to getting a gangrenous foot partially amputated. Someone standing back several feet from Stanley could know he had bladder and bowel problems.

By the end of that summer, I noticed I smelled like Stanley and was increasingly not feeling well. That winter I felt fine but then, during the summer and fall of 2013, pain and blockage in my digestion was constant, so I checked into Chestnut Hill Hospital, where I was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis.

In the years that followed I suffered in all kinds of ways, most notably, losing 40 pounds and all my muscle tone. I saw two more G.I. doctors. The first recommended surgically removing my colon, which I wasn’t ready to do. I took state-of-the-art medicines, Remicade and Humira, which didn’t put a dent in my steadily declining condition.

Nights were the worst. I sweated profusely. In getting up constantly to get to the toilet, I sometimes passed out on the floor. Once I got started in the morning, which wasn’t easy, I had some good hours, but I never knew how many. Aches and pains I’d never known shot around my body. Back pain, lower and upper, was some days unbearable. If one joint hurt one day, it would be another the next.

Finally I said, “I’m going to the top, or I’m going to die! I’m going to the University of Pennsylvania Hospital!” Thank God I did. A Dr. Klapproth finally ran a test showing I had C-diff, an insidious bacteria that is rightly referred to as a Vampire bacteria. It’s now November, 2015, three years after I handled Stanley’s clothing, inhaling, as I now learn, the spores coming off the dried excrement.

It took me three years to get the proper diagnosis. Stanley died at Temple Hospital a year ago, mercifully, after someone set fire to him as he slept. I visited him there. Before, he’d check in regularly at Chestnut Hill Hospital where, like other homeless people I’ve been acquainted with, they get a clean bed and some loving care. But, aside from the gangrenous foot, they never found anything wrong.

I received the insurance notice, since he used my address. Each hospitalization was $10,000. What he needed was no doubt what I’ve been saved by, an antibiotic called Vancomycin. Since this treatment, I’ve been bombarding myself with probiotics made by Leap Origin, 30 billion beneficial bacterias of 15 different varieties. After three years, how glorious to see my symptoms gradually fading away, Years ago, camping out west, I contracted tapeworm. It was painful, but two tiny pills that had no side effects killed these relatively benign parasites.

When you think of the damage parasitic bacterias have done, think of cholera, syphilis, anthrax, leprosy, bubonic plague and tuberculosis. The way parasitic bacterias mutate and thrive inside us is what has made antibiotics such a huge discovery of the 20th century. But now we learn that overuse of antibiotics is actually causing new mutations that are resistant. This is why I was only allowed to take Vancomycin for 12 days.

My horrifying and very lonely battle with C-diff makes me hope that microbiology becomes a passion for our next generation of brilliant scientists because there could be an epidemic right here in our midst, a Vampire bacteria like C-diff which, given a little more time, certainly would have killed me.

Stanley loved Chestnut Hill and was very proud of the kind ladies in our neighborhood who helped him, but in cases like this, you need to be very careful.

Susan Griffith, 60, is a long-time resident of Chestnut Hill.