Appts symptoms and conditions

First 3 months of my 6 month stint with this pill were great. Like some of you, I bragged about the pill. I'm 29 with a 4yr old and have had my cycle since I was 10. Have been on every imaginable pill since age 14. Never and I repeat never have I ever felt hopeless, depressed, pathetic. I have picked fights with my hubby over anything and apologize seconds later. I have lost patience with my child which is the worst. I don't want to do anything. I lose track of thoughts and motivation is non existent. This pills kicks in slowly around month 4 and then will gradually pull you further down. This was to help with water weight gain and to help with migraines, and to help cramping. I have gained 27.5 lbs in the 6 months I was on this crap. my blood pressure is low which is not common for people who have recently gained excessive weight.My migraines are worse and a daily occurrence. Periods are even harder, longer and painful. Acne has never been an issue, my periods are even more horrendous from day 1 thru 5 which is 2 days longer than I have ever gone. I am now into month 3 of being off ALL bc and the weight is almost harder to get off. I work out everyday and have cut calories down to 1200.. and have amazing water weight to boot. My obgyn who prescribed this has canceled my last 3 appts. She believes I have no side effects and that cramping can be eased by midol and exercise. My childhood family doctor has put me on lasix and potassium and is awaiting my arsenal of blood tests results he ordered Friday. I suggest any other option besides this pill. I am not on anything as I stated before and my sex drive is still quite non existent as well.

Since having the Mirena inserted 6 months ago, I have gained 30 lbs, my hands and feet swell terribly, I get headaches, suffer from insomnia, I have no sex drive, I cry all the time and other times I want to be as mean to someone as I can. I have developed heart palpitations and undergoing stress tests, ECG's, blood pressure monitoring. I have dry course skin and hair and developed acne and I either bleed or spot so have had to be monitored for low blood iron levels. I use to healthy and happy and feel like I spend all my time at appts or in hospitals. I have mentioned my beliefs concerning what the Mirena does and feel as though it reaches deaf ears. Today was a terrible struggle talking my ob/gyn into removing the Mirena. I will have to go for surgery to have it removed and have become very vocal about the Mirena overnight.

I was prescribed Paxil and started out at 10mg. then they gradually increased it up to 60 mg a day. Later on they added I think it was 200 mg of Wellbutrin. I was on Paxil for I think 2.5 to 3 yrs. What happened was I was so out of it I didn't know what day it was. The HMO would have to call me to remind me to come in that day for my doctor visits. I slept most of the time and was just worthless. I didn't care about anything much and didn't have the energy to do much of any thing. This was a drastic change in me and my family hung in there with all this. I actually drove which is not a good idea at all. But when they put you on this you don't realize how bad you are on this stuff and once you are on it for so long then you are either a captive at home not able to do anything or you try to take back some part of your life. You also can't just go off of it cold turkey at 60 mg. I tried and it got bad and went back on it. After I got really bad all I did really is drive to therapist appts or to nurse practitioner who managed the Paxil and Wellbutrin. After being on 60 mg of Paxil and Welbutrin for awhile/months and I was so out of it, that is when they said we need to back me off of it. I think it accumulates in your body and I think you can kind of have an overdose in a sense. They didn't really monitor it that well and took their sweet time recognizing it. But they didn't say anything about it. I think that is what happened to me but no one at the HMO said that. Instead they got me scared that I was going to run out of therapy sessions allowed while on Paxil and that is why they were going to back me off of Paxil. I guess another patient had that happen to her and they didn't want that to happen to me. I then say my therapist very rarely while I was backing off of the Paxil. She acted like I was ready to handle everything on my own. I had no idea that suicidal thoughts were in my future when backing off of this drug. But they sure knew it, a lawsuit in California had been filed the month after I started taking the drug and it was all about the lack of disclosure about the withdrawal issues. First I got off of Wellbutrin and then they slowly backed me off of Paxil. It was physically wrenching. Throwing up and diarrhea all at the same time. Painful is not the word. I have given birth to two kids and pneumonia and this was much worse! Chills, tremors, I felt sick all the time. This went on for months. When I talked to nurse practitioner they pretended that it was no big deal. I wasn't sure what was happening. I finally got pissed off about the whole thing and never called them back and they didn't follow up either. Not even therapist. They hoped I would go away quietly which I did. When you are in the throws of this and you know who did this to you, you really don't want any more of their harmful help. It took at least a year to feel better. There is this uneasy weird feeling and zinging noise that lingers for a long time. But my memory is a fraction of what it was. My short term memory is very difficult. I know that Paxil was responsible for this. How do I know? Well when you are on Paxil and if you have a recall on a bad incident and you start to emotionally react to it, Paxil will offset it by making you sleepy. It literally targets your emotional reactions and those thoughts connected to it. It tries to disconnect the feelings from the thoughts. These disconnects also disconnect your ability to remember other things. Even after I got off of Paxil I noticed that I would get sleepy when I thought of stressful things. It has taken me about three years and I am talking better and can remember many more words. I talked very simply for so long since I couldn't recall basic conversation. It targets emotional responses and I got to a point where I was really numb about a lot of stuff due to the constant tapping down by Paxil. I feel like it disconnected those connectors to your brain that talk to each other. My family made jokes about me and how simple I got and how I couldn't remember anything. They are worried that I have alzheimers disease or will get at this rate. I could not work on Paxil at those high doses I was on and while I was withdrawing. I found that afterwards my memory was so bad that I missed so many simple things that I would have never missed before. I am concerned that my memory lapse will cause a big mistake that may hurt someone. I was out of work for so long. I volunteered to keep myself busy until I got too bad. It would keep me busy. I also noticed that while on Paxil I was uninhibited and said things that hurt folks and I was unable to monitor myself like normal and couldn't determine what was not appropriate to say all the time. I had an emotional disconnect to myself but also to others. This hurt some folks and cost me a job. My memory is so bad that I have to write down important things if I really want to refer to it again. I also have given up on going back to school. I couldn't test well at all. I can not remember what I did 5 minutes ago let alone a chapter I have read. I am only 52 now and I feel so much older due to this. I suffer from Fibromyalgia and IBS. I was so upset with my doctors at HMO since they didn't warn me of the withdrawals. When they put me on Paxil I was adamant about not taking an addictive drug. My family has had a history of addiction and I was not going there. I know how bad it can get. Paxil's withdrawals is very much like the withdrawals that addicts go through. I was devastated by not only how doped up I was on Paxil but also all time I wasted on it and with the year just trying to withdraw from it. Then the time just trying to get some of my memory back to function. I am mad that there is no way I could go back to school to better myself. I am mad that no one warned me of any of this and if they would have I wouldn't have taken it. How many of you would take a drug knowing that you memory would be messed up? Not many. Certainly not me. My daughters know what a tyrant I am about drugs and alcohol. This is not something I would have opted for if the whole truth were known. They certainly don't warn you that your memory will be like swiss cheese afterwards. No one in my family has had such memory loss. No alzheimers disease. In fact quite the opposite is the case. My grandmothers were very clear at older age, so menopause can not be a big factor and beside this happened before menopause. Also grandfathers and father were very clear getting older. My family noticed a definite change while I was on and after Paxil. The irony was that when I started to go back to HMO for regular care which took me a long time to trust them enough for them to do even that, someone at HMO had put in my automated chart that I was allergic to Paxil. They won't say who put it in either. I was not allergic to it but they are now saying that I had a bad reaction. But what I say is after seeing so many "bad reactions" on websites like this I am convinced that this is more than isolated cases but rather the norm of what happens to patients who take it. HMO doesn't want to admit wrong doing. Paxil seems to have kept a lid on it. Besides how do you measure a bad memory and how do you prove it after the fact? You are getting older and who is to say it isn't genetic. But I was on it for maybe 2.5-3 years. I was so out of it I don't remember how long I was on it. I also was suicidal when coming off of it. I even called a crisis line since I couldn't trust the HMO. I was irrational. For those of you still on it I think you are doing more harm than good. I don't believe all the facts have come out about the side affects from these types drugs. Who would be doing the studies? Certainly not he drug companies, FDA is a joke and if you think the attorney generals are doing much think again. Yeah a couple states like CA an NY they did settle on suits about suicide for kids but they settled quietly. The doctors who prescribe these drugs also are in a catch 22 like my HMO. They don't want to be linked in this and will avoid it too. What attorneys can afford to go up against all those high powered attorneys for those loaded drug companies? Not many. No one is actually dying from this and that is another reason there won't be much done on this either. Fortunately today we can hook up online and share our stories and this is the first step in documenting what is really happening to patients.

Be so careful coming off of these drugs. Give yourself plenty of time to get normal. Make sure you are seeing a therapist you can trust and is trustworthy. It takes an alcoholic about a year to rid their bodies of the toxins that have built up in their tissues. I do believe that is also true of Paxil. Be kind to yourself and get good support while doing so. It can be a very lonely physcially and mentally anguishing time. Think of yourself like someone who has had a brain injury or stroke. You need to practice to get things to reconnected as best as possible considering. You will never be like before you took Paxil but with time and patience and hard work it can get better or you can develop ways to compensate or work around or cope with such memory loss. Financially this can be devastating and it was for us. The loss of income and finally a bankruptcy. We paid dearly for taking this drug. It can be very frustrating and you have to look long term. I think it is very easy and cheap for HMO's to pass out pills rather than schedule needed appointments for therapist and other alternatives. Before they started to take me off of Paxil I was warned by my HMO that I had exceeded my number of appts allotted for a 2 or 3 yr period. So I may end up without any therapy while on Paxil. That is the reason why they decided to back me off. I had apparently used something like 32 appts in two or three years and I was getting close to not being able to have any for a long while. This was interesting approach since by then they knew that suicide was linked with Paxil. They will put you on Paxil and they will leave you high and dry without at therapist if you actually use one regularly and use up a normal amount of visits. I have very little compassion for HMOs. What was amazing was listening to the nurse practitioner tell me if these drugs don't work there are lots of other ones we can use. These are the easy going drug pushers of today and they prescribe these drugs without much thought. They make it cheap and easy and they will swear to your face they aren't addictive but are basing it on very little research. They regurgitate what ever the drug companies tell them. The cost cutting with HMO's is almost frightening. I also have problems sleeping too. I wonder if the drug messes up your serotonin levels since it does make you sleepy so much of the time and when you are off of it the brain is fried from all that artificial serotonin that it no longer knows how to manufacturer it well. I think that is what maybe causing my Fibromyalgia since this is a condition where you muscles never repair themselves at night due to lack of sleep is one theory. I was always a deep sleeper before all of this. I think there maybe a connection.
Finally depression. When you can't remember what you did 5 minutes ago or simple things it gets more than frustrating, you get depressed at how limited you are now. The pain from the fibromyalgia is constant and that too is depressing. I wish someone could put together the data on this to prove the link to memory loss and how it has affected our serotonin levels.
The only way you can stop companies is to sue them. Government won't do it really. A class action suit might work.

Hello All. Diagnosed bipolar in 2004, been on and off meds realizing that I guess I can't really be off of them, though having a hard time dealing with it. Been on Lamictal, Lithium, Geodon, and several anti-depressants and others I can't remember honestly in the past, now just Geodon, 80 mg at night (can't do it in the morning, can't work). It's now 2 a.m. and I'm desperate. I feel worse on my meds than I do off, though I get suicidal and sabotage my life and my marriage and kids. I have experienced insomnia, tired in the morning, my muscles ache, I dance all morning long and my co-workers think I'm crazy ( I guess I may be). I have landed in crutches because my "dancing" has caused shin splits. I hold a good job and I have two kids that I need to tend to. My husband travels a lot and I just can't seem to deal with the Geodon. All others caused similar issues. I'm desperate on my meds, but I suffer schitzo symptoms off meds. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. BTW, just found two great doctor's, one for therapy and one for med admin. Only been back on my meds and doctor's appts for 2 months after being off meds for 9 months and suffering another "great" relapse. Help me!!!!

went to doctor for headache, he put me on bp meds (Lisinopril/Hydrochlorothiazide- 20 / 12.5) & happy pill (Paxil - 20mg) , a headache pill i only took a few times , cuz headache was going away, i thought due to lower bp ,within 1 weeks time , the next wk-end , i passed out while talking , (no warning)everybody said resembled stroke, went back to doctor , he suggested i have test done , i refused till it happens again, he put me on chol meds.(simvastatin 40mg) due to hereditary factor , went 3 more weeks , passed out at work (fainted), had numbness in both lower arms & both lower legs , took me to hospital, did cat scan, said shows sign of stroke ????? , went back to doctor, he doesn't want me to do anything until i see a neuro & do a MRI. I have an appt next mon , ** I was tired b4 i ever went to doctor, & did seem to get better, but now extremely tired after episode, I Do have heart palps, sweat perfusly, had a couple of stabbing pains, have dry coughed a couple times, but pretty sure have had at times b4? ,ok, all i know is, b4 i went to doctor , i was fine except for a headache !!!??? now hit the dirt 2 times with in a month , woke up this morning w/ a thought - i don't care what the doctor says , i'm getting off these meds & go back to over the counter plain ole asprin !I (especially after reading this ( a BIG Thank You to my neice for website) I will go to neuro dr on mon, for MRI, which all these appts are costly ! thanks yall !

I,ve had mirena for 2 1/2 yrs and it has been the worst 2 1/2 yrs ever! I went to the ob 8 months ago to have it removed and my Dr. would not take it out she said that there was no possible way that it could be causing my 6 days in a row migraines that only respond to imitrex nothing else. So for the past couple of days I've been trying to make an appt to have
mirena taken out but the appts are like 2 weeks wait. I removed it myself this morning took a while to find it, hope this doesn't offend anyone I just wanted it out that bad. I really hope I start to feel better and that all the symptoms tat I have been having are not all in my head. My symptoms include no menstrual bleeding but instead a viscous cycle of Pms, cramps, headaches and fatigue that never go away. For the past 10 months I,ve had migraines and have been taking imitrex consistently. I don't ever feel like getting out of bed and my 2 oldest kids don't understand why I'm so ill and my youngest 2 1/2 says mommy has a headache, all day long. I'm curious to know if any one else has had migraines or chronic neck pain? Thanks.

I was on Advair for 3 months. I had the following DAILY symptoms: throat constrictions/swelling, loss of voice, difficulty breathing/panic attack-ish reaction, and most recently heart palpitations followed by my heart skipping beats. I am now off of Advair for 5 days now. The first few days were rough - I got every symptom in full force. I am now taking Flovent 110 mcg. I am supposed to take it 2/day, but have started with only 1/day to see if my body will react to this lower dosage. I look forward to becoming healthy again - like I was prior to taking Advair.

Oh, and I went to 2-3 dr appts every week to try and uncover why I was having these terrible symptoms. All gave up on me. Including the asthma doctor that prescribed the medicine. Surprising that the entire GROUP of doctors did not know the side effects of Advair well enough to recognize them in me.