Help! Candida Albicans

My gut feeling is that a lab is not likely to stay in business (or keep their license, if one is required) if they’re so incompetent that they can’t tell which microbe is the dominant (usually by an overpowering percentage) one in a sample of this nature.

Since my other primary interest in biology is genetics, it seems entirely possible to me that OP is infected with a strain with variant properties in terms of its, um, end-products. :stuck_out_tongue:

I will concede that Dr_Paprika has a point. It’s possible there is a bacterial spp. that is making the environment more agreeable to the Candida, and also slightly altering the combined appearance, etc., of the discharge. Trichomonas is a very plausible suspect.

And BwanaBob also makes a very important point, especially if your partner is uncircumcised. That area inside the foreskin is a delightful home breeding ground for any number of microbes that like a dark, moist environment. This is a delicate issue, but not a delicate question; sorry, but your partner’s hygiene habits could be a problem here. I’m not necessarily suggesting moral turpitude, you understand; merely ignorance or slobbishness. Either of the latter can be cured, if he cares enough. If it’s the first, religion is the most commonly effective cure. <there is no smiley available that seems adequate here :frowning: >

BTW, Who Stole My Name?, it’s not necessary to use the cooking pots to “boil” the undies. You could use any other kind of container, e.g., plastic dishpan or rinsed-out mop bucket. If you use the dishpan, you could probably satisfy your roommates’ concerns by spraying it afterward with antiseptic spray (the major brand in the US is Lysol; I don’t know if you have that brand Down Under, but I’m sure you have some known-reliable brand. :slight_smile: Ten minutes of boiling is probably unnecessary. Simply letting them soak in the hot soapy water for that time should suffice, then dump, and add the vinegar to the rinse water.

My point (and I do have one) is that while she may well have yeast dominant, yeast may not be the root cause of the problem.

I do know from personal experience how hard it is to get rid of yeast. I am the one who suggested boiling the underwear, because sometimes in a case of persistant breast yeast, it is necessary to boil bras, that a vinegar soak is not enough. Admittedly, there is a difference in how yeast functions in milk ducts, compared to how it functions in surface vaginal tissue. If boiling the underwear is overkill, then I’ll happy to take back my suggestion. On the other hand, I think it’s useful to know the extreme end of the ‘what you may have to be prepared to do’ spectrum, because sometimes you don’t find these things out until you’ve been struggling with a problem for monthsor even years. I actually had an MD tell me that to get rid of thrush (breast yeast) all I had to do was put a little Gyne-Lotremin lotion on my nipples 3X/day for a couple of days, and not treat the baby because she was asymptomatic, and it would go away. He was wrong. Very, very wrong. 3 months later, after I had suffered unspeakable pain at every nursing, and treated the baby ever 4 hours with nystatin for several courses of 2 weeks at a go, and treated myself with miconazole after every feeding…I discovered that gentian violet made the pain go away entirely by the second application. Only I didn’t learn this for 3 months because nobody told me. I suffered for…what, exactly?

I hope very much that Who stole my name’s doctor can find the exact cause, and better yet, a very effective treatment for her. But I think it’s entirely fair also for people to offer suggestions from their own experiences with yeast because she just might wish she’d known these things, somewhere down the line. They are not medical recommendations, they’re just anecdotes, but they give her things to at least keep in mind. In case they might prove helpful somewhere down the line.