Wikipedia defines Giardiasis as "popularly known as beaver fever [1] � is a parasitic disease caused by the flagellate protozoan Giardia lamblia (also sometimes called Giardia intestinalis and Giardia duodenalis).[2] The giardia organism inhabits the digestive tract of a wide variety of domestic and wild animal species, as well as humans." Also "Symptoms include loss of appetite, diarrhea, hematuria (blood in urine), loose or watery stool, stomach cramps, upset stomach, projectile vomiting (uncommon), bloating, excessive gas, and burping (often sulfurous). Symptoms typically begin one to two weeks after infection and may wane and reappear cyclically."

Especially like the projectile vomiting part but am glad to report I didn't have any vomiting. The short version is that it sucks - bad.

Being a hydrologist by profession and having tested alot of surface water, I know what's in it. I NEVER drink surface water without treating it in some fashion - boiling, chemical, filter. Many times filter and boil. I know the ugly stuff in water.

I still somehow managed to acquire the fuzzy, cute little Giardia protozoa. The reason for the post is to pass along why/how I think I acquired it. I think it came from eating snow, alot of snow. The day of, and the next day after I shot my bull, I ran low on water both days. I supplemented with eating snow at every stop. I'll bet I never do that again. I'm the only one in our group to get Giardia sickness, and I was the only one eating snow. We keep a bottle of sanitizer on the table in our tent and use it religiously so have ruled out other forms of contacting intestinal material.

The only other source is the elk I shot. I do not gut animals I'm quartering so no intestinal contents were involved. I'm sure I could have somehow touched some of its feces but don't recall any.

I swallowed 4 horse pill antibiotics yesterday and feel much better today which is to say I think I'm going to live. At least my stomach isn't the size of a beachball and doing somersaults.

I wonder if they make hand sanitizer in a pill form? I think its called whiskey.......

Thanks for the account. I'm just curious, how long after your exposure did you first develop symptoms?

Sounds like a rough go.

I've heard folks pontificate that they'd go ahead & drink suspect water if they had to, 'cause while they might get sick in the next week or two if they drink it, they'll die within 3 days if they don't.

I hope you weren't that low on water.

But I'm glad you made it back!

FC

I shot my bull last Monday and did a big hike on Wednesday, took Tuesday off to hang out. I started feeling not quite right over the weekend. The 'expulsion' started this past Monday. From what I gather, symptoms start in a week or so after exposure.

FC - no where near that kind of water shortage. I simply forgot to pack a third bottle of water and hiked farther than I expected. I thought eating snow would give me a double benefit - cooling plus hydration. Not so much.

I've read 1-2 weeks but fortunately, never put that to the test myself. Thanks for the data.

BTDT. Once you have had it, you will be paranoid in what water you drink

Same here. I know the word is grossly overused nowadays, but the results of the giardia were "Awesome"

As one of my buddies used to say of some women - "stunning"

I grew up drinking out of irrigation ditches, stock ponds, rivers and streams on the Western Slope--I'm walking giardia....

If I'm close to the source, I drink the water.

There has been a couple times I got a mild case of good 'ol Beaver Fever, but it only lasted a few days.
Indeed, the results even then were kinda' awesome......


Casey

Been there done that.

I know where I got mine. A crystal clear trickling mountain stream.... fed by at least 3 different beaver ponds up higher.

Doh!

You probably transferred it from your hands after butchering the elk.
I've gotten eye infections twice when I put my contacts in later after previously butchering elk in the field. I did gutless butchering too. And I cleaned my hands thoroughly I thought.

There is just now way in my mind that pristine snow should be contaminated unless you were eating slushy snow that was commingled with contaminated runoff.

As my wife says, you got you "dong paws" on your snow.

But bwinters, what about all the experts that say giardia from water (or snow) is a myth? (I've had it too, three times.)

I'm curious if you've ever tested backcountry water?

Some giardia cysts can survive one freeze-thaw cycle, so it's perfectly possible to get giardia from eating snow. And I think symptoms usually show up in 7-10 days, but commonly from 3-25 days and possibly longer, or even in as little as 1 day in rare cases.

If anyone is unconvinced that getting giardia from backcountry water is reasonably common, I've done some research on it.

Agree on the snow and possibly the elk - but still point to the snow. It was the slushy melty snow that had been sitting for a week or so. Plus, ifn' I was betting, I could pick exactly where.

Here:




I was sitting up there eating snow after a good hike in and noticed some of 'natures raisins' under the snow where I was sitting. I wasn't too concerned because I didn't eat snow anywhere close to the raisins but who knows.

I got the same symptoms one other time ~ 15 years ago after I killed a buck in archery season. That landed me in the hospital for 4-5 days severely dehydrated and with my liver enzymes all screwed up.

Buck - can't say as I've tested water in remote backcountry but have done a bunch in woods areas to know it likely won't change much. As northerndave learned, those crystal clear streams can be appealing but I'll pass. If beavers are anywhere in the area - stay away from the surface water. I won't drink from those nice mountain springs either. They aren't much better.

Are you wearing surgical gloves when you clean your beast?

Buck - great link! I too have read Sierra Nevada article you cited a while back and was very skeptical, and frankly a little doubtful. He can treat it like its nothing and brag all he wants about contracting numerous parasitic illnesses. Having been through it at least once, likely twice, I'm not increasing my risk. That is plain stupid. Intestinal parasites, there are more than just Giardia, just plain suck.

Haven't for 35+ years I've been hunting. I normally make fun of people who do - but may re-think that stance. This really sucks........

The Gunnison river runs in my backyard and I got in the habit of cooling a six-pack near the bank. Great plan until I picked up Giardia. I wiped the bottles off before consumption, but it wasn't enough.

I got giardia about 13 years ago when one of my Labs splashed pond water in my face that had goose feces in it. It can be very difficult to get rid of. I ended taking several different kinds of antibiotics and my digestive system has never been the same.

Hope you can get rid of it without any after affects!

The snow thing has me puzzled though. Unless some water ran through the snow you ate or got splashed up on it.

It's not only the bugs, but wearing latex gloves sure keeps the blood off which to me seems to hasten the cracks in the finger tips. I don't get them near as much as I use to. Same here, I didn't wear them for years, but now I do.

My original thought was the elk. After several days in the snow and cold, my fingers get cracks in them from dry/cold. I thought maybe I got blood or somehow some intestinal juice in the cracks. I mentioned that to my doc and he thought it more likely a water source. He's a big hiker and has had giardia himself. He leaned more toward snow or some other water source.

I also mentioned cutting the fur off the skull cap when I got back. The area between the skull and fur was green. He didn't think that likely either.

I try to remember to have a pair or 2 on me. I really like the gloves for keeping most of your hands clean. Fingers anyways, I admit it is nice not having the dried blood under and around the fingernails.

I think the snow is a stretch.

Unless it was the yellow kind.

Could have been the snow. Giardiasis will form a cyst that is damn near impossible to kill by freezing.

That's kind of a personal question, ain't it??

I was thinking the same.......lol

I used to field dress all my deer bare handed as well for 20 years and put a big freaking chew of Skoal in at some point after cleaning it. It took me once getting sick a few years ago and since then it's gloves. Plus, I cut my self when I was in my early twenties field dressing one, never got anything then, but I worry nowadays with CWD and other diseases. Not that my knife wouldn't cut through the surgical gloves I know wear, but I'm a lot more careful nowadays. Especially when cleaning my beast..............

I'd be inclined to blame contaminated hands or gloves as opposed to the distilled water found in snow.

My initial thought as well. Except I'm the only one in my group to get it so it just about has to be something unique to me.

Snow is not pure by any stretch.

That's not what she told me.......

Did a doctor confirm for sure you had Giardia?
If not, it could be any manner of "bugs" with a hundred ways of contracting it including your own dirty hands, especially being out in the woods a few days. I carry hand sanitizer in my pocket when I'm out there and use it often, especially after every "bathroom stop", before eating, after handling animals, etc.

If it was Giardia for sure, I've never heard of anyone contracting that from handling animal blood. I've only heard of it being contracted by ingesting contaminated water, so I'd vote for the snow, as unlikely as that seems to me.

I don't know if there are any other means of contracting it, maybe, just never heard of it but I would like to know.

Sorry to hear you were suffering. I picked up a few years ago on a float down a northern river called the Dease. More dang beavers in that river than moose.

The only symptoms I had were an upset stomache and projectile diarea. It passed in a few days but it was a nuisance.

Worked with Dr Glen Clark at CWU in Ellensburg, WA, collecting samples for Girdia, working on dying plans to find one that works, and then counting cysts under magnification. Spent hundreds of hours doing it and ended up with a dose myself.

I had no weight to lose in those days yet managed to lose a bunch. Flagyl was/is the only thing they will give you for it and it is just a huge purge of the gut, good and bad.

Ended up with another dose helping Dewey Halverson prepare his drops for the Iditarod Dog Sled race. We boned dozens of skinned beavers and packaged them. Having looked at many hundreds of slides taken from beaver scat I knew full well there were plenty of cysts to go around.

I think I got it from opening a beer can...

Tiny, tiny rills up high in the Cascades were often packed full of Giardia and the voles up there proved to be the source. No way will I drink water straight from a creek.

Many folks can never get rid of it and it can be debilitating.

Bwinters: Giardiasis (commonly refered to, also, as Giardia) is nothing to take lightly.
I contracted it on a guided Moose Hunt in Alberta, Canada - what a miserable incapacitating disease it is!
It can also be fatal!
My older brother had a friend who contracted Giardia in the Wind River Mountains of Wyoming on a hiking trip - he died three weeks later in a hospital in Seattle.
He literally bled to death internally!
My good friend here in SW Montana had the disease misdiagnosed for 4 or 5 years - the blood tests simply failed somehow initially to reveal Giardia.
He underwent misery that ravaged him and nearly killed him.
He also at one point underwent "exploratory" surgery and organ biopsies as his Doctors could not figure out his problem.
Finally another blood sample was sent to the MAYO Clinic and Giardia was "discovered" and soon was remedied for him.
I have another friend with whom I traveled from Seattle to Montana to Hunt with one November he walked out into an icey creek and scooped up a handful of water and vioula he soon became incredibly ill!
Our trips to clinics did not resolve his symptoms and once we got back home he kissed his wife and she came down with Giardiasis!
She lost 22 pounds of weight before she was cured.
I know people who claim that Giardia did not exist in North America 100+ years ago and that it came from Europe and Asia about then???
I am glad you are recovering!
I carry my own water when Hunting or I go thirsty.
On our back pack Hunts we filter and boil!
Hold into the wind
VarmintGuy

Sure sounds like it:

I got it back in 82 on a Colorado back country deer hunt drinking water from a creek ,just like everyone else in camp was.
I was the only one of 6 guys to get sick.
At the time I was in the Army and weighed about 140 lbs.
Within 6-8 weeks I was down to about 105 and they still couldn't figure out what was wrong with me. Just kept giving me pepto bismol.
Finally went to a civilian Dr in Colorado Springs and he figured it out. Flagl cured it but by that time I was down to about 95 lbs.

Wasn't fun.

This occured in the late 1970s.

I had a friend in Los Angeles who loved to back pack up in the high Sierra. One day, he became sick. Stomach cramps and nausea, then "the runs." He became sicker and sicker. His doctor did not know what was wrong.

As my friend deteriorated, his doctor put him in the UCLA hospital. He got worse. Doctors ran all kinds of tests and could not figure out what was wrong. He was approaching a "terminal state." His wife was frantic.

One morning, a new, young UCLA resident doctor, an Oriental man who was educated here in the States, read his charts and then asked him, "You wouldn't happen to be a hiker, would you?"

My friend answered that he was. The young doctor then asked him if he had been hiking recently? Yep, up in the Sierra about three weeks ago. The doctor asked if he had drunk any of the water from creeks in the Sierra? Yes.

The doctor said, "You have contracted Giardia." Antibiotics specific to Giardia were adminstered and in a couple days, my friend was much better and out of danger.

He never again went hiking without taking an expensive water filter with him and using it assiduously. To this day he has not again contracted Giardia.

It was his experience that made me stop using unfiltered, or unboiled water when hunting, hiking, camping, etc.

L.W.

Call your local water authority and ask them how well filtered your tap water is, you'll be surprised. Our water is filtered to "95%". So yes bugs can get by. MIL's neighbor got it a couple months ago and she barely leaves the house. They called to city and got the above response and a comment that it's not uncommon to pick it up from tap water.

Yeah, one of the local small water companies has a "boil warning" out to its customers as "brain eating" organisms have been found in its water supply.

Younger fellows probably cannot relate to this, but think of a colonoscopy purge coupled with violent puking, cramps and fever and one can get an idea of how giardiasis feels.

Do say????

I doubt his hands were contaminated by the blood but rather touching the hide after the elk wallowed in a nasty mud pie on the edge of a beaver pond, not to mention pissing all over himself. Then he puts snow in hand and eats it.

Yeah I kinda assumed the same based on ^that. But just wondered if his doctor just figured he had some intestinal bug and prescribed the antibiotics or specifically identified Giardia. I have no idea if specific antibiotics are required to knock out a specific bug or what.

Giardia is a Protist, not a bacteria. Sulfamethoxsasole/Trimethoprim (Septra) is the drug of choice,as it is one of the few antibiotics that will work on Giardia.

Now that is a possible scenario that would explain this whole thing.

Rock Chuck and I just completed a hunt a few weeks back. We camped down by the creek in a low draw. We hunted up high and would have liked to have camped up there for the very nice available campsites, to save a couple thousand feet of elevation change each day, and it's just a beautiful area. However there is no water that we know of up there and rather than pack water, we stayed low. On day two, up high and several miles from camp we found water...a shallow spring that was being used as an elk wallow. We decided no amount of filtering or other treatments would satisfy us to use that for a water source. Needless to say, we didn't move camp!

I am a fan of tinidazole. 1 dose, 92% efficacy. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC88965/table/T1/

Thats the one I took. 4 horse pills worth. It was amazing. I took it at 5 PM with food. It made my stomach upset, gave me heartburn, and a bit of nausea. By morning, my stomach was done doing flips, I was done 'excreting' and felt much, much better. In fact, I went to work in the afternoon. I was weak but wasn't de-gassing or squirting.

The most striking symptom was the belches. They tasted like a good belch after about a half can of carbonated beverage - kind of metallic and burned your throat a bit. When reading of symptoms, it is described a metallic taste. I'd describe it as a carbonated beverage burp.

Of all the possible causes I've read on this thread, this makes the most sense. My first cut is always on the twins to keep proof of sex on both rear quarters. Inevitably, you have to cut the Johnson off and skin ahead of it to get the hide pulled back. We might have a winner.

How would giardia get in snow? It's a parasite that, as far as I know, doesn't live at high altitude where snow is formed in the air. I can see a very slim possibility of snow on the ground getting contaminated after it falls but new snow should be safe.

It gets in the snow the same way it gets in the water.

Those sparkling mountain streams and late summer snowbanks may be contaminated by Giardia , an intestinal parasite that loves to make you miserable. Often called "beaver fever", this parasite can be carried by all mammals, including small voles who tunnel in snow.

Elk are known to carry giardia. If elk have been wandering around in the snow, it is likely contaminated.

Once again, the "expert" has spoken. From Wikipedia:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulfamethoxazole/trimethoprim

Trimethoprim/sulfamethoxazole or co-trimoxazole (abbreviated SXT, TMP-SMX, TMP-SMZ, or TMP-sulfa) is a sulfonamide antibiotic used in the treatment of a variety of bacterial infections. It consists of 1 part trimethoprim to 5 parts sulfamethoxazole.

Because it has a higher incidence of adverse effects, including allergic responses (see below), its use has been restricted in many countries to very specific circumstances where its improved efficacy has been demonstrated.

Side effects

There has been concern about the use of trimethoprim/sulfamethoxazole, since it has been associated with frequent mild allergic reactions and serious adverse effects, including Stevens�Johnson syndrome, myelosuppression, mydriasis, agranulocytosis, and severe liver damage (cholestatic hepatosis, hepatitis, necrosis, and fulminant liver failure).[10] .... Renal impairment, up to acute renal failure, and anuria have also been reported. These side effects are seen especially in the elderly and may be fatal.[1

Protozoal infections

Co-trimoxazole is used to treat isosporiasis[9] and cyclospora cayetanensis infection, and for prophylaxis against cerebral toxoplasmosis in HIV patients.

``````````

In most countries, the drug used to treat giardiasis is metronidazole. The current research evidence suggests albendazole is probably as effective, but has fewer side effects (gastrointestinal and neurological) and is more convenient to take or administer. Both need a five to 10 day long course; albendazole is taken once a day, while metronidazole needs to be taken three times a day. There is very little evidence to support using any other drugs (tinidazole, quinacrine, furazolidone and nitazoxanide) in preference to these two main options.[1

We're talking 2 different things - new snow and old snow. Yes, old snow can be contaminated in many ways. New snow, where there are no animal tracks anywhere around, should be clean.

As I remember my case of giardia it was perilous to fart unless you were sitting on the throne.

smokepole, that wasn't nice...

Yep.

Today was the first day I tried that trick - successfully I might add.

I'm sure you guys are glad to put that behind you. So to speak.

GROAN!!!!

Probably a different symptom, but I read something about snow getting a red tint on its surface which was some type of growth or something that would make you sick. I am guessing it had to be at least a few days old???

I am also wondering if a back country hiker/hunter could carry a prescription or some medicine to begin treating the sympons immediately. Might speed the recovery if you could begin taking it as soon as it started.

I've heard tales of people getting sick from "watermelon snow." Apparently it can have a laxative effect but a quick google search isn't turning up much else about related illness.

Long distance hikers sometimes carry a dose of Flagyl or tinidazole. I am leery of people self-diagnosing and treating, however. Most stomach upsets are not giardia and these are fairly powerful drugs.

I prefer tinidazole because it is a single dose treatment.

Giardia symptoms according to Mayo Clinic (not all may be present)

*Watery, sometimes foul-smelling diarrhea that may alternate with soft, greasy [floating] stools
*Fatigue or malaise
*Abdominal cramps and bloating
*Belching gas with a bad taste [often "sulfur burps"]
*Nausea
*Weight loss
[symptoms often nearly disappear, then return a few days later]

Symptoms usually take at least 3 days to develop, more commonly 7-10 days.

Just enough time for a traveling hunter to be in line to board his flight home.

I have had it twice in two years time. The initial bloom was one of the most painful ordeals I have ever experienced.

How do you think you got it?

From a closed loop potable water system at work.

I'm a fan of the Sawyer water bottles, never run out of water or worry about bugs.

http://www.sawyer.com/water.html