How one patient overcame his fear of hospitals during the C. diff outbreak

"Joe Kenny has had a life-long fear of hospitals.

Brock University's head athletic therapist sheepishly admits it's more than a little ironic. It's hard to explain, but the prospect of having to seek hospital treatment has filled him with dread for as long as he can remember. So as Kenny sat in the emergency room at the Niagara Health System's Ontario St. site, the slow realization that he would need surgery was not sitting well.

"I started to feel light-headed, as if I was going to faint," he said. "I think I knew what was coming in the back of my mind."

Kenny's fears were heightened by months of press coverage of the NHS's battle with the killer superbug Clostridium difficile. He knew that as a healthy, middle-aged man he was unlikely to fall ill because of the bacteria, but it weighed on his mind as his stomach ached. More than 30 patients with outbreak-related C. difficile infections have died during the outbreak that is still ongoing in St. Catharines."

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