Breathing tests symptoms and conditions

I have been taking 200 mg of lamictal for about 3 years. I am on no other medication. I too have the dry hacking cough that never ever goes away. All day and all night. Dry hacking cough that sometimes leads to gagging. It is terrible. I have had chest xrays, breathing tests and no one can find a reason for the cough. It started about the same time I started this medication and I believe it is the cause. I also experience pain in muscles, it's a roving pain that seems to show up in different places daily, sometimes muscle spasms. My stomach is always nauseated. Very little short term memory, runny nose all the time, constant feeling of having a cold, blurry vision, sensitive to light, little red bumps that appear on my skin, itch, then when they disappear, a scar is left like a cigarette burn. I am reducing the amount of lamictal I take as of this week. I am now only taking 175 mg and will for another week then go down to 150 mg. I am hoping some of these side effects will go away, if not I have to get off of it altogether. It's funny, because I didn't have all these side effects when I first started taking it. Seems the longer I take it the worse it gets. Just can't handle it anymore. wf

Lauren- May 2005 through August 3, 2007: The following is my daughter’s story which I put on paper so that she could bring it with her to the gynecologist in case I couldn’t be with her. I didn’t want her to forget anything. Someone suggested that I post it to a website:
The most recent issue seems to have started when she first went away to college in the fall of 2005. She came home one weekend with a stomach virus (vomiting, nausea), but it seemed to never completely go away. She was taken to the ER a few times, just to be treated for dehydration and sent home because there was 'nothing wrong with her'...Over the next few months she seemed to constantly feel sick, nauseous, fatigued, and get a lot of headaches. We took her to her primary care doctor, who did blood work and treated her for heartburn, acid reflux, etc.. During this time, she actually had appendicitis and had her appendix removed. After that she continued to feel sick. So we moved on to the gastroenterologist who ran many tests: cat scan endoscopies, more blood work, and were told that they couldn't find anything wrong. Then we started with a nutritionist to help her eat healthier and hopefully reduce the nausea which subsided occasionally but never let up. Nothing there helped. Then it was back to another gastroenterologist with no results. Over this time, anxiety was hitting her big time. She was finishing up finals in her first year of college and was constantly skipping classes because she was too nauseous to get out of bed for her 8:00 classes. Home for the summer - no relief. She decides she couldn't go back to her college for her 2nd year so she enrolled in community college - not exactly the plan, but at least she was on course with her classes and doing well. Still stressed and nauseous, we started with the neurologist who prescribed many medicines and ordered an MRI, which showed nothing (no problems, not no brain!). Back to the primary care doctor who finally diagnosed her with Irritable Bowel Syndrome, which fit the current symptoms of nausea, severe diarrhea while vomiting and the finale: passing out. So, back to the state college for 2nd semester of sophomore year. But the medication for IBS was making her too sleepy to get through the day, so she discontinued it. The symptoms had subsided a bit but towards the end of the school year got worse again - just in time for finals, again. During that semester at school, she sought counseling at school which seemed to help her stress level, but she still had daily ‘melt-downs’, so the therapist sent her to a psychiatrist for meds. The doctor started her on the lowest dose (25mg) of Zoloft. As she started to feel a bit better, they increased the Zoloft over the next few months until she was at 100 mg. Home for the summer, the symptoms came and went, but about 2 weeks after she started the 100 mg, she confided in me that she was feeling depressed and actually had thought of 'not caring if she died'. We immediately took her to the psychiatrist upstate who had treated her at school and whom she had seen once since she left school. (She had also continued with the cognitive therapy at the college.) The doctor told her to start weaning off the Zoloft, but start Seraquel (another seratonin-based drug). She also said she was going on vacation and Lauren needed to be seen often as she switched medications, so she advised us to find another psychiatrist closer to home to monitor her progress. So the new doctor put her on Wellbutrin, continued to wean her off Zoloft, and continued her on the Seraquel. He also ordered blood work and a fasting glucose-tolerance test (all of which came back normal/negative). The symptoms got severely worse over the next 2 weeks: constant nausea, vomiting, dizziness, weakness, fainting. On Monday, she spoke with the psychiatrist and he told her to stop all meds. We continued to believe that the recent symptoms were caused by either the psychotic meds themselves, still in her system or the withdrawal of the meds. By Tuesday night, she had been vomiting for almost 24 hours and I had to take her to the ER, not because I thought they could figure out what was wrong, but to re-hydrate her because she was becoming dehydrated. After 7 hours, and more blood work, x-ray, EKG, she was released and proceeded to get nauseous on the way home at 4AM. BUT, a very nice nurse came in while Lauren had fallen asleep and asked me why my daughter was on so many meds. I basically told her the above story and she asked me when Lauren started on birth control pills. I told her that I took her to my gyn. in May of 2005, before she was going off to college and we told him about the terrible menstrual cycle (heavy bleeding and 1 day a month home with cramps all through high school) and he put her on Ortho-tricycline low. At her 3 month check, she told him she was losing large amounts of hair. He changed her contraceptive to 'Ov-con 35'. In November, she complained of nausea and he switched her to Yasmin. She has been on it ever since. The nurse asked me if I was aware that every symptom that Lauren has had since October of 2005 could be a side effect of oral contraceptives!! She told me about a book to buy, written by Dr. John Lee about hormones and imbalances. She told me not to stop the b.c. pills abruptly, because since they are synthetic hormones, and with what her body was going through, it might put her into an hormonal chaos, similar to a full-blown menopause! So we are now reading the book, waiting to do saliva- testing and trying to see a gyn. to help us. Her own gyn. has a personal family emergency and is on a temporary leave of absence (as we found out when his office canceled her yearly check-up twice in the last 10 days). We are trying to get her in with one of the other doctors. She cannot start a 3rd year of college still feeling ill!
Added to the above is the fact that my husband’s sister called to see what was going on with Lauren after she got a phone call from her mother. It turns out that my niece, Heather (age 23), has been making the rounds with the doctors and having testing done (MRI, blood work, etc.,) because she has been nauseous and passing out. Guess what medicine she is taking…..Yasmin!

This is the list of most of the medicines (besides the 3 oral contraceptives) that she has been on during the last 27 months because of the side effects of Yasmin, and no doctor suggests she stop her oral contraceptive pills for a few months!
Prochloroperaz (5mg), Topamax (25mg), Prevacid (30mg), Zofran (4mg), Omeprazole (20mg), Amitriptyline (25mg), Amitriptyline (50mg), Inderal (60mg), Propranolol (10mg), Amitriptyline (10mg), Sertraline (Zoloft) (25mg), Sertraline (Zoloft) (50mg), Metoclopramide (5mg), Sertraline (Zoloft) (100mg), Seroquel (25mg), Wellbutrin (150mg), Dicyclomine (10mg), Compazine (severe reaction: Extrapyramidal), and other anti-nausea meds in 4 trips to the ER (one due to the reaction to Compazine!)

My husband had an allergic reaction to some dust he inhaled and had minor tightness in the chest. His allergist and pulmonogist put him on Advair and he went straight downhill from there. He complained about side effects and expressed his desire to live drug free and the Drs insisted Advair was safe and get used to it because you will be taking it for the rest of your life. After 4 pulmonogists and worsening asthma he finally read REversing Asthma by Firshein and got off the ADvair. He is drug free for 4 months and his breathing tests were better today than 4 months ago when he was on ADvair.
Going off advair saved his life and our marriage. His side-effects included:

Shortness of breath
Lethargy - he stopped working out regularly
Insomnia
Anger - rages - he would burst into rages
Body aches
Forget fullness - he was once driving and couldnt remember the way home!!
And once he said he said he was sleeping and he thought the house exploded and he awoke to realize it was a "popping sound" in his head when he was asleep. He was glad to be alive but he never took Advair again after this one.

weight gain,extreme tiredness,insommia,high blood pressure and constantly thirsty and always hungry. when i first took advair ..my dr prescriped it without doing any breathing tests just heard me cough. asked if i had asthma as a kid. said no just bronchitis( sorry typo queen here).i had pnuemonia twice. anyway i quit the advair after seeing the side effects but still can't lose the weight. how long does that stuff stay in your system? will i ever be able to walk distances again without having to stop and lean against something ? any input would be helpful..thanks

I began taking Advair 250/50 about two months ago. After one month, I developed thrush on the back roof of my mouth and back of my throat despite gargling with alcohol-based mouthwash and brushing my teeth after taking the Advair. A prescription of Nystatin to swish and spit every eight hours took care of the thrush. I still find myself clearing my throat quite a bit with a feeling of throat congestion and am sometimes hoarse. After 90 days on the 250/50, my breathing tests improved only slightly, so the doc upped me to Advair 500/50. Three days later I experienced discomfort and mild pain in my left chest while competing in a bicycle race which I do regularly. The discomfort increased with increased effort, so to play it safe I dropped out and relaxed. This feeling has continued over the last three days but appears to be lessening. I assumed I had strained an intercostal muscle in my ribs during my breathing tests at the doc's. After reading comments on this site, I'm more concerned about side-effects. I plan to discontinue use of Advair temporarilly to see if it disappears. If it does, I will restart Advair use and see what happens, then post more to this site.

My daughter has experienced growing chest pain and shortness of breath (as the Imuran has built up in her system) despite the fact that her chest x-rays, EKG's and breathing tests were all normal. The Prednisone was originally blamed for this but she has been off it for over two months and the pain is worse than ever. We have stopped giving her the Imuran.