Update on a post from a while ago.

[leftyladyfrommo]

One of my good friends (she's about 68) started having a terrible time with explosive diahrrhea. She made a trip to the grocery store and just sort of collapsed there in front of about a hundred people. And she just lay there and pooped all over herself. No warning.

Really, it was just an awful thing to have happen. And she had several other bouts with the same thing but not quite so bad or so embarrassing. But she was getting completely housebound because she was afraid to go anywhere.

Turns out it was the diabetes drugs - Metformin. Manufacturer knew all about that side effect.

I don't understand why people don't check out the meds they are prescribed. I do. I go out and check Ask A Patient. And I look up all the side effects.

[Faux pas]

1. Side effects are why i fight taking any prescriptions.

I always try to find a supplemental solution. 3000 mg of fish oil a day keeps the runs away. Niacin for blood pressure and cholesterol, etc. ps-the only script i take is thyroid and that's only because Armour thyroid is not available in the good old us of a.

[leftyladyfrommo]

4. I've been trying to control my blood pressure by myself.

I finally had to give up and take the pills. But I don't think I really have any side effects so far.

I'm just really salt sensitive and if I even eat out my blook pressure goes up. Or if I get upset. I just can't control everything. But I sure tried.

[Faux pas]

8. When i'm upset my blood pressure goes down, like 85/65,

it really gets my butt dragging. I take 1000mg of niacin, the kind that makes me flush (so i know it's working). I always have taken niacin except for when i forgot about it while taking care of my Alzheimered mom. I almost got into a big argument with my dr when he wanted me to take blood pressure meds. That's when i remembered the niacin. I did a test run, if it didn't help within a week, i was gonna break down and take the meds. It worked and when i went back to the dr and it was down, i confessed to him what i'd done...he said 'good for you'!

[leftyladyfrommo]

16. Huh. I wonder if mine might do that sometimes, too.

When I get upset I start to feel like I can hardly move. I have to just go somewhere and lay down for a while.

I should try the niacin. It doesn't cost much. Maybe start out with kind of a lower dose. I'm also walking every day now and I hope that will help. I just hate taking meds for anything.

I did get it to stay down for a while after I lost 15 pounds but I had to watch everything I ate and never go out to eat. I am really salt sensitive. I hate to cook and am a terrible cook so trying to eat right all the time was just impossible for me.

[gopiscrap]

2. I had a friend who had a mild form of the same reaction to this drug

[leftyladyfrommo]

5. I was the one who started looking into this drug.

Gastric upset was the number one problem that people wrote about.

I just wish someone had told her because she really had a horrible time of it there for a while. And her doctor just shrugged it all off. I told her that if he had those side effects he wouldn't put up with it for 15 minutes. He'd be out there figuring something else out.

[djean111]

3. The side effects are always represented as only happening to a tiny number of

people. And glossed over.
What is sadly ironic about the prescription meds that are prescribed with seeming abandon - reading OPs and articles about how supplements are bad because they may have side effects.
I guess Pharma is up-front about the killer qualities of their drugs, in little tiny print and fast talking TV shills, it is all righty, then.
And I never take a supplement without research - WebMD and Mayo Clinic are surprisingly good resources. Check for side effects, interactions, overdose.

I am lucky in that I am on Medicare - and do not need any drugs whatsoever. Last winter I made the mistake of chatting with my very nice doctor about how sad I was that my grandson, who I have raised since he was 3 or 4, was likely going to move across the country and live with his other grandma, more opportunities there than Florida.
She whipped out a prescription for celexa or something like that. I checked on the net for side effects - holy shit! Plus hard to stop taking, too.
I gave the unopened bottle to her, asked her to take it off of my "permanent record", and said that I saw no need to feel happy about something that I should either feel sad about or work on the sadness with stuff like logic and reason and time.
I imagine my record says "refused medication", but that's okay.

[leftyladyfrommo]

19. I was refused for insurance because I quit taking my blood pressure meds.

I was just checking it myself every day and watching my diet and stuff. My blood pressure was fine. They said I was not following my doctor's orders or something like that.

We have a lot of high blood pressure in my family and I think it's genetic pretty much. No one is overweight but they struggle with it anyway.

[NV Whino]

6. I was in the hospital a while back due to a reaction a medication

Very rare, but it hit me. So of course this required more drugs. I asked the nurse about side effects of one of the meds. She said, "Honey, I can't even carry the book on that one."

[leftyladyfrommo]

7. The number of people who die each year from medical mistakes

is huge - and that includes mistakes with meds.

People really need to stay as healthy as they possibly can and not take all that stuff. Every drug you take effects every cell in your body. It's serious stuff and people just take that stuff without even finding out about it.

[djean111]

9. When I got my colonoscopy this year (1st one, no problemos), the anesthesiologist

asked me what meds I was taking, I said none, is that a problem because I might be allergic to something and not know it?
He laughed and said no, perfect, his real problems are when people take medications that might react with the anesthetic, and that people tend to forget to list all meds or think meds they have been taking for a long time or whatever are not worth mentioning. Or they don't want to cause delays.

It is really hard to "stay healthy" for a lot of people in this economy. And sometimes genetics are going to get you no matter what.

[hedgehog]

10. Excellent post! People should be aware that sometimes they will react poorly to a drug they've taken

for a long time.

I have an autoimmune disease which means a lot of prescriptions to bring a series of symptoms under control. Anytime I'm not feeling right, I walk through the list to check the possibilities. Sometimes all I need to do is tweak the time of day - like move that one that's giving me insomnia to morning instead of evening, or the one that makes me drowsy to bed time!

[jwirr]

11. Interesting - I have taken Metformin for years and have had no side effects. How long had she

been taking them?

[leftyladyfrommo]

12. For a while but I don't know how long for sure.

It was months.

[jwirr]

14. What I was wondering was if she was allergic to the med? I have had medicines that did not work

and had some really bad side effects but mine showed up almost immediately.

[Warpy]

13. Oh, gosh, it did the same thing to my mother

to the point she finally got off the stuff. Most people don't have any problems with it and it's a good drug. However, my mother and your friend are some of the unlucky few.

I'm surprised no one warned her about this possibility. Or maybe she just didn't read the handout from the pharmacy.

[leftyladyfrommo]

15. I don't think she ever looked up anything about this med.

Her doctor had her taking 4 pills all at once time before bedtime. When she had that awful spell at the grocery store she landed in the emergency room after an ambulance ride. No one put it together there, either. They just wrote it off as a fainting spell. She has kind of a history of fainting spells.

Her sister has had kind of the same problem with fecal incontinence. She takes the same meds, I think plus some insulin.

Fecal incontinence is just an awful thing to try and deal with. If that happened to me I would never go outside again. Someone would just have to bring me my food.

[Warpy]

17. I take 4 pills at bedtime, nothing unusual about that

However, my mother had a handy dandy full time reference in her nurse daughter. Even then, it took some convincing to tell her to stop taking it and let her doc know that the side effects were far worse than the disease.

She'd gone to skin and bones by the time she finally listened to me and went into full rebellion. My poor dad had bought a carpet shampooer that was left out at all times for those occasions she didn't quite make it to the bathroom.

I still think the stuff is what caused her final decline. She lived to 94, but the last 6 years were miserable ones for her.

PSA to all of us: the doctor is not god, no matter what he thinks about it, and some medications are just not right with our body chemistry. We need to stop taking the ones that make us sicker than the original disease.

[leftyladyfrommo]

18. I think she is taking 1 at bedtime now and 1 in the morning.

So far so good. She goes back to the doctor today. Be interesting to see what he says.

Isn't there some other alternative drug to take?

[Warpy]

20. There are always alternatives out there

Metformin works differently than other drugs, though, so it's disappointing when people who need it can't tolerate it.

Diabetes research is very well funded, so there are plenty of ways to approach the illness so it doesn't devastate the sufferers.

[leftyladyfrommo]

21. She went to a diabetes class at North Kansas City Hospital

and went over all the stuff on diet and exercise but I don't think she does any of it. I think she tried to stay on the diet but just gave up because the food was so bad. Now she just goes to McDonalds or wherever. And she gets no exercise at all. She just mainly talks on the phone all day and watches TV.

Sounds like she is lazy but the real problem is that she just has no energy at all. If someone could help her with that her situation would improve a whole lot.

She has a brain tumor behind her ear and they did a special radiation on it (gamma knife?). The tumor isn't growing any more and she has the feeling back in her face but she isn't right. She used to have gobs of energy and do all kinds of things.

Now she just sits. Eating stuff that tastes good is just about the only enjoyable thing she has left. I think that radiation did some kind of major damage.