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.
Very well said and so very true. There are two people that I need to thank for helping me through some of my very toughest floxie days, so far… And those two people are you, Lisa Bloomquist and Stacey Warner-Siebenlist. Thank you both very much for your thoughts, advice and just listening.. Those days that I felt lost, confused and scared where all I could do was cry were some of the worst days for me.
I agree. This website needs to be made known more. I didn’t find it for almost a month+ after my Cipro moderate reaction started. All you read are the gloom and doom stories, scary medical terms and the words “irreversable” and “permanent” thrown around.
We need more recovery stories, even partial recoveries, or even merely finding ways to cope day by day. I’ve read most the stories here and each one is so uplifting and full of suggestions and ideas.
Thank you everyone, and thank you Lisa.
There are guardian angels watching over us and giving us hope. Lisa, you are one of them. Thank you for taking your time to beautifully write the truth of it all. It helps me more than you can ever imagine. You are very kind and I hope the best for you too. Sincerely, Jude.
Thank you for writing this, I think it’s uplifting and I am pessimistic… Nobody has yet understood me in the flesh. Feels like I am carrying a small child on my back 24-7(pain and misunderstanding). This is real positive. I needed to read it!
I am so grateful for this website! I’ve been blessed to have so much help from my parents and sister in my journey of recovery! Lisa you too have become an important member of my supportive team! Thank you for allowing God to use you to help others!
My turn around started when my neutral pathic told me I was cipro poison . That is all I needed to here . Because all the other doc’s told me cipro would not do that . Then they tell you stuff like you may have ms or lupusor cancer . Want to talk about a mine game . Before all this happened if you would of told me to go ta neutral pathetic doc or a acupuncher I would of said your nuts. The part that is not talk about offen is the damage to your sanity . I was lost my wife did not under stand no one understood I was on the verge of loosing it . Finding the doc I did when I did was what saved me . I also found web sits like this . Just finding somthing positive help so much .
Dr. Whitcomb in Brookfield, WI was a real life saver for me. He is the anti-aging doctor I went to, because he would give me IV magnesium and glutathione. But he did much more than that. He actually listened. If he didn’t know what would work he did some research. He gave me non-drug solutions such as meditation and encouraging me to exercise (to my tolerance) to promote healing. He reassured me that tendon pain didn’t mean a rupture necessarily and pointed out that statistically speaking, the odds were in my favor for healing as opposed to spontaneous rupture.
It was good to have someone to bounce ideas off of, someone who knew things. He was able to tell me for sure that the Cipro was truly out of my system. But of course, if you get hit by a bus, the bus being gone is little consolation. But at least I knew I wasn’t being hit by the same bus over and over. It just felt like it.
His suggestions for supplements to help with anxiety and to give my body the help it needed were excellent. The doctor who floxed me in the first place could think of nothing better than a Benzo (Dr. Whitcomb said not to take it) and Prozac. Dr. Whitcomb taught me that healing my CNS damage was not something that could be fixed by a pill. It required work on my part. “It’s all up here,” he said, pointing to his head. Then he offered to teach me to meditate in our next session. He kept encouraging me that I am on track toward healing. Would my body ever not be magnesium deficient? He said that the natural state of cells is to be healthy and filled with magnesium. My body wanted to get back to that point so it would.
He didn’t do anything all that remarkable when you think about it. He just refused to have a strong pill be his first option, but instead looked at the whole picture, at options that would work without causing more harm. If only all doctors had his views, operated the way he does! Knowing that I could go see him when my symptoms were flaring helped me to get through the really bad stretches. He always had something new we could try and the continued assurance that I will get well with time.
Thank You Lisa for this site…I was Floxed the last of this June…I am not as bad as a lot of people on this site…I have got some good information on different things to help me improve…I pray my Heel Tendons get better over time…God Bless All of You…in Jesus name Amen….and their are Angels here on earth and Lisa you are one of them…