Better days symptoms and conditions

My experience with levaquin has been a nightmare, n a few other drugs as well. It all began last year in August. Went on vacation came back with a bad kidney infection, strep, and bug bites. Doctor gave me lev. n within mins. I was feeling the drug it was awful. I was climbing out of my skin, anxiety I guess, could not sleep but an hr. mind was racing. next day the body pains began, headache, calf, muscles all over ached, not sure if i took another pill or not, but was sent to ER. That Dr. gave me Keflex 500mg 4X a day, Now mind you I have been for the past 10 years having reactions to penicillin and other meds, so i did inform theses drs. of this as my father n siblings have also, but mine seems to be severe NOW! Then all heck broke loose. Now during the time of the keflex i still was not sleeping and the pains in muscles did not stop. everything from the lev, was still there n the keflex just added. It gave me gastritis, vaginititis, n colitis, n the dr. put me back on until the burning was unreal. Have had 7 months of pains,anxiety,numbness, tingles, acid reflux, weight lose, n reactions to every pill made. can not take zantac swelled my throat,use to take it yrs. ago. omeprazole bad to thats where the numbness has come after taking, prednisone took 2 days n my throat became inflamed n more muscles went crazy. can not take Tylenol or Ibuprofen. I have been so sick mind in a fog can barely function,Xmas was tough had to have my mother who is 75. come take care of my family n me n to take me to dr. appt. which there has been a ton, NO answers they were telling my family it was me, I was feeling like giving up crying all the time because i did not know how to let people know or how to make them see that this was not me.Finding this web site has help me keep my sanity, and show my family look this is me, I am slowly having better days as my body detoxes, but scared when i will need meds. trying to find natural ways but is slow n not sure where to go or trust. I tried to get an allergist immunologist to test me n he said these things can not happen, and refused to test me. I am on a quest to find other ways, as 2 of my children are reacting like me and it will be just a matter of time before something does this to them. My 28 yr. old has helped me alot she knew what was going on. So now she is worried what is down the road for her, my 13 got sick while i have been and received a penicillin and she started having anxiety n heart palps, n still now she gets heart palps. As i said it is in the family but it is more severe in me n my kids are having reactions sooner. So if any one has any other options for me to look into please let me know. I am about 50% back to where i was, but it has been life changing, diet has changed, no more bad stuff, coffee, quit smoking, etc. its not hard to do when you hurt n feel so bad u try anything. Try this is so long but something has got to be done about these drugs. Mainly antibiotics, My research has come up with numbers of 150,000 people die from these types of drugs, That the drug companies put drs. thru school, That mainly women this happen to, Now i know that the drugs are important and have help millions of people i just don't like the fact that they know that some of us this will happen or even kill us, They need to find solutions for us, the ones that they have harmed permanently, and not deny the drugs caused these problems. Thanks for letting me express myself.

I am a parent of a 14 year old son. He has been on many meds due to having migraines, adhd, seizures, and asthma. For 3 years his ADHD meds have been switched. Now Thanks to a friend she told me about singular side effects. OH MY GOD. it blows my mind reading this stuff. He has been on singular for 3 years and never once did I think all these problems were caused by that drug. Flipping out over the smallest things, arguing with us his parents, his friends, being mean to us and a real smartass, depression, and MAJOR attitude. Getting upset over nothing at all then crying for no reason What was his Dr. thinking? Needless to say, I took the singular while she was telling me this stuff about her own son, and threw them away, I will never allow my son to take that shit again. I hope in three days like all of you say, that my son will be that loving, caring, friendly person he use to be ! Singular free is how he will be!!

This is a follow-up. I have posted about our experience before, but to summarize: 6 year old boy on Singulair for over three years for Asthma. Drug worked wonders, but side effects developed so slowly that we thought those were "phases" that would go away. Side effects were just as everyone else reported: nightmares, fears, depression/sadness (we even went to a child psychologist since we thought this behavior was all due to father's deployment), aggressiveness, crying at the drop off a hat (like a 2 year old, not age appropriate), attention deficit, school performance dropped, and also, at the very end, obsessive compulsive behavior.
We stopped Singulair as soon as we heard about the FDA investigation (on NPR, about 6 to 7 weeks ago). Asthma has not worsened, thank goodness, so we make due with the Flovent for now. Most of the side effects were less prominent after some time, however the obsessive compulsive behavior stopped only a few days ago. We have better days, we have worse days, but slowly the better days outnumber the bad, aggressive, and negative ways.
What I read again and again in the postings is that we all assumed our children entered a bad "phase." A phase that just got worse and never ended!
Reading about the very same side effects in our children, over and over again, alarmed me. Taking my son off the Singulair and seeing the improvements, some faster some slower, totally convinced me. I will never ever have Singulair in my house again.

I am a 54 year old, very active female. Had a UTI and was given 750 Levaquin. I have taken 10 days worth and began having a sore swollen ankle, followed by right knee pain, followed by shoulder and arm pain. I have never experienced muscle pain to this degree before. I am scheduled for a doctor appt in 3 days. I started trying to imagine what could be causing this. I took a shot and looked up Levaqin side effects this morning, after another night of no sleep and severe shoulder pain. Well guess what, from everything I just read I think I found the source. The problem now is how do I get my life back???? The one thing I am sure of is it's time to stop taking the poison!!!

I am an individual that started taking Singulair about a year ago. I've had allergies to weeds, grasses, and pollens since I was a little girl and have taken a variety of meds including Claritin, Zyrtec, Allegra, Flonase, and allergy shots. Last summer, my usual Claritin just wasn't enough so my doc prescribed Singulair. It worked wonders for my allergies. Soon after, I began to feel "numb" -- that's the best word to describe what I felt. I was depressed. It just so happened that my mother had had surgery and I had moved to a different city about the same time as beginning the Singulair. When I began feeling depressed and disconnected from the world, my doc and I contributed it to depression from life transitions. It didn't go away though. For a year, I isolated myself. I didn't talk to friends and family. I missed over 10 days of work just because I didn't want to get out of bed. I slept almost 15 hours a day, gained 60 lbs, didn't clean my house. I didn't really do anything and I didn't care. I felt so disconnected from the world. I didn't cry. I didn't feel suicidal, but I knew that something was wrong with me. I thought I was having a breakdown or something. My doc checked several things but all test results were normal. It wasn't until my mother seen a CNN report on Singulair that I began to link my depression to when I started the drug. I immediately quit taking Singulair and felt better within 4-5 days. After 2 1/2 weeks, I was back to being my old self. It was so scary feeling so isolated, numb, and disconnected from the world. I never would've thought about it being a side effect from an allergy medicine.

I took my 16 year old child off of singulair 6 weeks ago (3-28-2008). She started taking it 11-17-2003. She became dark, depressed, grades dropped, dropped out of dance and cheerleading, started cutting her legs with razors, stomachaches, headaches, anxiety attacks, trips to the emergency room. 6 months of fluoxetine given by her psychiatrist. Nothing helped her be happy again. Sad and Dark young woman. NOW: She smiles a lot, and is eating diner with the family. No headache or stomachache for a month now. She is sleeping better. Before she said that her mind would not stop thinking. She is taking pictures again and even asked me to order her book called "Understanding Exposure" and is talking about taking a class on digital photography at NMSU branch university to start on her college electives now. She is out more and even has a part time job at an ice cream parlor. Just lately I have stopped checking the trash for waded up tissues with blood (from cutting). Chris, I have had all her medical records sent to her primary Doctor and we are very willing to open them up. You have to have a child suffering to understand where we are coming from. The most dangerous place on earth is standing between a mother and her child. Singulair took our children from us and maybe changed them in some way forever.

**Update** on my 17 year old son, 7 years Singulair use. He has been in a therapeutic boarding school for 2 years because of serious behavioral issues quite possibly because of side effects of Singulair. He wrote me a letter the morning he went off Singulair, March 29. In it he wrote about being very depressed and sad and told about how he had been struggling with it for such a long time. It was very upsetting. I got the letter this morning. Coincidentally, we had a conference call about 20 minutes after I read the letter. He has been off singulair for 4 days now. I asked him how he felt. He said "Excellent". That he was feeling a lot better, not very depressed and really feeling good about himself. I have not heard him describe himself as "Excellent" in a long, long time. I am cautiously optimistic that removing Singulair from his system will have a dramatic effect on his well being. He sounded incredibly upbeat today. It was amazingly good news! I have reported online to the FDA his symptoms and sent my comments to CNN. The FDA needs to issue a BLACK BOX warning about Singulair. It's quite possible that this drug has caused my family to live a nightmare for 7 years.