Saving the Life of a Floxie

I think that it’s really important to have someone who saves your life early in your Floxing.

Everyone’s Floxing/Fluoroquinolone Toxicity is different.  Some people start having aches and pains after taking a fluoroquinolone and those aches and pains gradually build over time as their tendons get weaker and weaker, their cartilage thins and their nerves get more exposed.  The people with gradual onsets of fluoroquinolone toxicity problems are probably unlikely to realize that the causes of their issues are the antibiotics that they took at some point in the past.  They are more likely to attribute their pain to aging, Fibromyalgia, arthritis, etc.  Other people’s fluoroquinolone toxicity comes on suddenly.  They go from being healthy and active, to being suddenly unable to walk, sleep, think or do any of the activities that they enjoyed just weeks earlier.  Those people tend to freak out – as is a reasonable thing to do when, without warning, everything in your body is going hay-wire.  All Floxies deserve help as they go down the path of being poisoned, and recovering.  Those with a sudden onset of physical and mental health issues very much need help as they go, suddenly, from being healthy and active to barely able to move.

Fluoroquinolone Toxicity is frightening to experience.  To go from being able to easily run 5 miles to barely being able to walk, is scary.  To have pain that travels throughout your body, for no apparent reason, is scary.  To lose your memory, your ability to connect with other people, your ability to read, your ability to sleep, your sanity, etc. is scary.  All of those things happening at once, is TERRIFYING.  Add the fact that excessive fearfulness is a CNS related symptom of fluoroquinolone toxicity, and you get some people who really, really, desperately need help to make it through.

We need people to save our lives.  Perhaps that sounds dramatic.  Perhaps it is.  But it certainly doesn’t feel overly dramatic when you are going through having a bomb go off in your body.

Most people go to their doctor first.  I’m sure that there are plenty of Floxies who have been helped, and saved, by their doctors.  But generally, there is not a lot that Western Medicine can do to help people going through Fluoroquinolone Toxicity, so MDs are left to either turn away patients with FQ toxicity, or misdiagnose them.  The rejection that Floxies face from their doctors, the people that they go to first to help them, to fix them, is painful.  Not only is everything going wrong in their body and mind, but there is no solution that can be offered by the people who gave them the poison that hurt them.  (The promise of every pharmaceutical ad ever seen on TV of, “see your doctor immediately if ____ occurs,” is broken.)  It’s heartbreaking.  Sometimes the heartbreak of the disappointment is compounded by doctors being hostile or disrespectful to the Floxie, accusing him or her of having mental problems or of being a conspiracy theorist.  I won’t forgive those doctors who make sick people feel worse by blaming them for their illness.  However, I actually feel sorry for many doctors in the situation of not knowing how to heal or fix a Floxie.  They have no tools with which they can fix the mess that their drugs made.  They have little knowledge of the effects of these drugs, much less the mechanism by which they operate – they only know that they kill bacteria and that they typically don’t immediately kill people.  They have little time and a lot of pressure.  The Western Medical System is not set up for doctors to save lives (with the exception of emergency medicine), or to heal people.  It is set up for doctors to “fix” ailments by throwing drugs at people, and both patients and doctors suffer as a result.

When doctors aren’t able to provide help, help is sought elsewhere.  And when it is found, it is a God-send.  We truly NEED our lives to be saved.  We need someone to prop us up, to let us know that we will be okay, that we can make it, that life isn’t over – in a way that we can hear, in a way that we can know and truly believe.

My Acupuncturist saved my life.  The needles that he put in me didn’t save my life, though I think they helped.  The herbs that he gave me didn’t save my life, though I felt better because of them.  HE saved my life.  He treated me when others weren’t able to.  He gave me a diagnosis.  He treated every new symptom that popped up, they popped up daily for a while, and he saw me as often as necessary.  He stopped the downward spiral that my body was intent on for a while.  He stabilized my physical, mental and emotional health.  He made me realize that healing was possible.  He never downplayed a symptom and he always believed me, but he would still tell me when I was being silly, wrongheaded or self-destructive.  When I lost my memory and reading comprehension and asked him, “What if I’m stupid now?” he responded, “But you’re not,” and it meant the world to me.  Because I trusted him.  He knew how to treat my body, mind and spirit.  He knew what to say and he knew what to do.  He is a healer and he was able to help me to heal.  I am eternally grateful to him.

Other people are saved by their Chiropractor or Naturopath or other Alternative Medicine provider.  Fortunately, Alternative Medicine is more set up for healing, and listening to patients, than Western Medicine, and help with healing can be found within those systems.

Other people have their life saved by a family member who recognizes the crisis that his/her loved one is in, and drops everything to help them.

Other people have had their lives saved by strangers.  They reach out, in a crisis, to people over the internet, and sometimes a guardian angel comes through and helps them, saying whatever needs to be said to let the panicked Floxie know that she/he will be okay, that she/he will make it, that the crisis will pass.

Life-saving help can come from anywhere.  It can come from a person who you know well or it can come from a person who you’ve never said a word to.  It can come from a doctor’s office or a church or a Facebook group.  It’s there though.  You might have to look for it.  You might have to ask for it, but it is there – and most people are happy to help if they can.

Those people who help Floxies through the toughest times, are so, so, so important, and I am grateful for every single person who has understood, who has helped, who has guided and who, somehow, maybe even without them realizing it, has saved a life.

Thank you.