We got Jessica’s new stool lab test back about a month ago but we just had our follow up appointment two days ago. Even though most of the yeast markers had gone down, occult blood showed up on her test. We were concerned and had her retested by LabCorp through our local doctor. The doc that diagnosed Jessica with IBD didn’t seem to care that we had rested through LabCorp and it was negative. She said, “If the lab test comes back positive one more time we should make sure we follow up with her gastroenterologist.” She seemed a bit concerned. Our attempts to make sense of the inflammation on the lab test also seemed futile. She said about the lactoferrin markers that, “It doesn’t matter about the standard deviation and the numbers, it should not be out of range at all.”

This was so discouraging. Doug was in shock on the drive home from the office. The U.S. National Library of Medicine says about fecal occult blood, “Occult blood means that you can’t see it with the naked eye. Blood in the stool means there is likely some kind of bleeding in the digestive tract. It may be caused by a variety of conditions, including:
Polyps
Hemorrhoids
Diverticulosis
Ulcers
Colitis, a type of inflammatory bowel disease

Blood in the stool may also be a sign of colorectal cancer, a type of cancer that starts in the colon or rectum. Colorectal cancer is the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States and the third most common cancer in men and in women. A fecal occult blood test is a screening test that may help find colorectal cancer early, when treatment is most effective. https://medlineplus.gov/lab-tests/fecal-occult-blood-test-fobt/

I thought maybe that the test might be wrong because of the fact that I had been giving Jessica 1000mg of vitamin C daily for several weeks before the test. I guess I didn’t see the part of the directions where it said not to take vitamin C within 2-3 days of taking the test. “Some drugs commonly cause small amounts of bleeding into the stomach or small intestine. Moreover, vitamin C and a few other drugs can cause an abnormal chemical fecal occult blood tests. Therefore, these drugs must be stopped before and during the collection of samples.”
https://www.medicinenet.com/fecal_occult_blood_tests/article.htm#how_do_the_results_of_chemical_fecal_occult_blood_testing_compare_with_immunologic_fecal_occult_blood_testing
Our doctor said it didn’t matter that she had taken a lot of vitamin C. She was positive for occult blood. I guess I was a bit confused about vitamin C. for some reason I thought taking a lot of vitamin C would cause the test to be falsely positive but the opposite is true, “Do not take vitamin C supplements or drink or eat juice or fruits high in vitamin C for 7 days before the test. Vitamin C can cause a false-negative test result.

Don’t eat red meat, such as beef, lamb, pork, and liver, for 3 days before testing. Although it’s unlikely, these foods could alter your test result.” https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/encyclopedia/content.aspx?contenttypeid=167&contentid=fecal_occult_blood. A study with the title False-Negative Stool Occult Blood Tests Caused by Ingestion of Ascorbic Acid (Vitamin C) and said, “In a female patient with unexplained anemia, ascorbic acid ingestion and apparent false-negative occult blood tests were related. When she stopped ascorbic acid, her stools became strongly reactive (“4+”) by three tests for occult stool blood; this association was observed repeatedly.” http://annals.org/aim/article-abstract/689937/false-negative-stool-occult-blood-tests-caused-ingestion-ascorbic-acid

This is not good news for me because I thought that the test may be wrongly positive and now it seems that it may have been right. We have so much more to learn.

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