Medical Journal Houston, May 2007 By Victor S. Sierpina, M.D. GALVESTON --Making rounds one Saturday morning, I visited the room of a patient with intractable diarrhea. I didn't see the patient herself on the first pass as she, tethered to an IV pole, was firmly planted on the toilet relieving her condition. It turned out she had been in the hospital for 10 days with this problem and the inpatient team as well as the gastroenterology consultants were stumped by her case. She had gone through a variety of blood tests, endoscopies, stool studies, and the like to no avail. Some new biopsies were planned to rule out a set of "Zebra" conditions. Her story started a few months before when she was treated with antibiotics for exacerbation of her COPD. That had helped the bronchial infection but resulted in the rather prolonged diarrhea.