Every Friday Michelle Polacinski, a Floxie as well as the Director and Producer of ‘Floxed,’ sends out a newsletter to those who have subscribed to the ‘Floxed’ newsletter. The Floxed Friday updates are always interesting and thoughtful, and Michelle has given me permission to share them here. 
 
If you would like to receive the Floxed Friday updates directly from Michelle, please subscribe to the Floxed Documentary email list. You can subscribe through THIS LINK. Subscribing also helps Michelle to gain funding for the Floxed Documentary, and she doesn’t send out spam. 
 
The following was written by Michelle: 

We’re in Los Angeles, home of the entertainment industry, the most prevalent researcher on Fluoroquinolone Toxicity, nostalgia, and the doctor that floxed me. Ahhh it’s good to be home… and it’s weird to be home.

We’re shooting two very important interview subjects out here and we are very excited about what’s to come. During every interview, we learn something new that we didn’t know before. Did you know that on certain tests that doctors have to take in med school, “Cipro” is the answer to “What do you prescribe for a UTI?”

That was the case back then, but it’s not the case now.

Before diving headfirst into the entertainment industry, I was on track for medical school. I attended a pre-med summer camp for interested high school students in Boston, where I wore pant suits and attended conferences with a coffee in my hand as if I were a full-blown adult.

In college, I took classes on Animal Behavior and Microbiology, auditing Immunology by accident, and making friends along the way.

A lot of these friends, but not all, ended up making it to medical school. I was eternally grateful when they flooded me with facebook messages, skype calls, emails, and texts asking me the details about what happened to me. They were both alarmed and very curious.

Early into med school, they didn’t know much about what to expect, but a few years later, those same people reached out to me again, “just to let me know” that they had just taken an entire lesson on Fluoroquinolone Toxicity Syndrome and that they were told only to prescribe fluoroquinolones in near-death situations.

Naturally, my former academic peers shared my floxed story with their classmates and later, I had messages from other friends in nursing school who learned about FQT/FQAD.

At Chowder Fest this year, a woman made a sly remark about my “intelligence” when I propped the door to the bathroom open with a garbage can and we ended up talking about Fluoroquinolone Toxicity Syndrome just for a girl who was peeing to raise her arm over the stall and scream, “Is that CIPRO?” She learned about it in a Biology class studying for her Bachelor’s Degree.

I know it’s hard to have hope if you’ve been floxed, particularly if you’ve shown no signs of improvement, but there is hope in education. There’s hope in the future.

We hope that once finished, we can use this documentary as an educational resource for doctors and other medical professionals alike. Just talking about it seems to spark awareness and hopefully, change.

Have a great weekend!

Best,
Michelle Polacinski
Floxie, Director, and Producer of ‘Floxed’

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