This personal story was originally posted to the Quinolone Adverse Reaction Forum. If you are a victim of a quinolone antibiotic and need support or advice then please visit the Quinolone Adverse Reaction Forum (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/quinolones/).
 

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Levaquin
Posted on 14 February 2003
I'm posted on here before but it has been a long time. When I first got on this news group in July of 2001 after being destroyed by Levequinn (about 41 days worth), all I saw was bad and never saw any posts about people that got better and I promised myself that when I got to a point that I would post my progress. Well for me it's been 19 months now. When this started my symptoms were major tendon damaged in basically all joints. Everything and everywhere hurt, I think my neck was the worst, hands, feet, you name it. I was put on Oxycontin for the pain, and Ativan to relieve the tension and to relaxe the muscles. I used to get on this news group to get information, to be honest I did'nt get that much, but to help those that are hurting I'm going to post all I learned. As of now, all the tendinitis is gone, I still have pain but it's very minor compared to what it was and my PT guys says it's because of muscle memory. The muscle may be healed but it still thinks it's injured, but this is supposed to go away soon. Any way for about 12 months I lived in hell, I was taking so much oxycontin and ativan, I ended up in rehad, then my doctor finally used a pain killer that worked which is a duragesic patch. I never had any of the PNS problems, had some CNS ones in the beginning but they went away in about a month. I've seen some of the best doctors in the country, all believed the cause, but treatment is very difficult. After seeing probably the best Remuo in the country who is based at Shands at the University of Florida he said it was obviouse. Apparenty there are a lot of veterans that have been hit with the stuff, so any VA doctor is going to have experience in dealing with the symptoms. The only fix is time, and PT. I used to see all kinds of posts on here about not using meds and so forth. Use the meds, pain killers that is, but not NSAIDs use narcotic basic but not PRN like vicodin or percocet, use pure forms like oxycontin or the Duregesic patch (which is great), use valium for the muscle spasms, take MSM about 7 grams a day, take some calicium and magnesium in the chelated form, but don't over do the vitamins and stay away for all those noni and other maricle cures, the only cure is time and physical therapy. I was in PT for 16 Months and I still go back every two weeks or so. Believe me you will heal, please don't take any form of steroids, any. Every doctor I've seen has warned me about them, in fact if you use them your chances of healing demish heavily and if you used them for an extended period of time, it could talk 10 years to heal. Steriods cause the drug to chelate deeper into the tendons. Anyway I just want to let those suffering out there you will heal, I remember sitting at my PC 14 months ago, just crying, not knowing what to do, it was horriable, months I spent, just trying to do simple thing. Going to the bank was a huge chore. Now I'm back to working 14 hour days, walking all day, things are good. For those of you that would like more in depth help or info from me feel free to email me..., and I'll be glad to talk to you. Good luck to all, and my God bless and be with us all, in him also you will find your way. I sure did. Jay

Originally posted on the Quinolone Adverse Reaction Forum at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/quinolones/message/12718