Surviving Fluoroquinolone Toxicity

One of my first symptoms of Fluoroquinolone Toxicity was that my hands and feet swelled up and were incredibly painful.  My feet hurt more than my hands.  I could type without pain, but walking was agony for a while.  I wore Crocs everywhere for about 9 months because they were the only shoes that didn’t make my feet scream in pain.  Because painful feet were the worst physical symptom that I had, I told myself that if I could ever dance in high-heels again, I would consider myself to be healed.  About 18 months after I got Floxed, I could dance in high-heels again.  After that, I wrote my recovery story and started Floxie Hope.  I considered myself to be 99% of my pre-sickness capacity.

I still had some lingering symptoms though.  My memory and reading comprehension were still diminished.  My heart rate was increased.  I didn’t have much endurance.  My bladder control left a bit to be desired.  I could deal with each of these things though.  They weren’t that big of a deal.  Lots of people who consider themselves healthy deal with feeling worse than I did.  I certainly wasn’t sick any more.

But the fact that my heart rate was increased, and I suspected that my cardiovascular system was adversely affected, scared the crap out of me.  I knew that my autonomic nervous system had been adversely affected, hence the heart rate and bladder issues, and the notion that the FQ damage to my autonomic nervous system may have damaged me fatally was stuck in my head.  I couldn’t seem to shake the notion that the damage that Cipro did was eventually going to lead to my death.  How could it not lead to my death?  Cipro damaged my AUTONOMIC NERVOUS SYSTEM.

However, I suspected that being convinced that Fluoroquinolone related issues were going to kill me was part of the process, part of getting sick and even part of getting better.  I considered the notion of my impending death from FQ toxicity to be a symptom, just one more thing to get over, and that once I no longer thought that I was going to have a heart attack from it, that I would consider myself to be 100% better.

I think I’m there.  I think that I’ve finally disabused myself of the notion that this is going to kill me.  I think that I may actually live just as long as I would have if I had never taken Cipro.  It’s possible.  Of course, it’s also possible that I will indeed have a heart attack in my 40s that is a direct result of the damage that Cipro did to my cardiovascular system.  But I’m leaning significantly more toward the possibility that I will live a long and full life.  As they always say, you (I) could get hit by a bus tomorrow.  None of us ever has any idea what the future may hold.  But it’s really nice to have finally let go of the notion that this is going to kill me.  It was my last remaining symptom.  Now I can say that I’m 100% recovered.  The last 664 days (12/2/11 through 9/26/13) were rough, but I think that I made it to 100%.  Cheers to that.