Eye floaters symptoms and conditions

Three pills @500mg each. That’s all it took. Three pills of a five-pill prescription for levaquin. I can still see the pursed lips and amused twinkle in the eyes of my urologist who said "You're going to be all right" after he prescribed meds for my prostates. The doctor discerned the rapidly cycling angst in my face as I teetered emotionally between blind faith in his curative powers and a nagging suspicion that he was another overpaid oaf in a long train of medical practitioners whose 15-minute consultative look-sees had done sometimes good and sometimes bad to stem the ravages in my then 61- year old frame. Subsequent events proved my nagging suspicions were correct.

Was my urologic problem bacteriologic, viral, or "non-specific"? Was it psychosomatic, STD-related, or associated with my recurrent bouts of kidney stones and urethritis? The medicine man really didn't know, but that didn't stop him from enlisting quaint Latin phrases to describe my condition. He prescribed me with an intimidatingly-named antibiotic (”levofloxacin”) from an odd sounding family of antibiotics (”fluoroquinolones”), which loosed on my internal flora a block-buster med suffused with flouride molecules just to make sure that the quinolones would penetrate every single tissue and nerve bundle including my brain, which is protected by a blood barrier normally inhospitable to biochemical interlopers. And the quinolones got into my brain where they proceeded to have a ball!

First, the quins performed little warm-up exercises. The tendons in the back of leg calves began to ache. Then the quins floxed my neck tendons, which began to make little “cracking” noises every time I pivoted my head. Now began the full spectrum assault: insomnia, intracranial pressure, near fainting, eye floaters, white-outs at vision periphery, unprecedented nightmares more preposterous than scary, panic attacks, intense agitation, anxiety, diminished executive function, inability to focus, depression, heart palpitations and a ghastly feeling of having been poisoned. My body felt toxic as if I were being cooked chemically from the inside-out.

The worst of it was cognitive impairment: I couldn't finish a sentence because I couldn't find a critical word or descriptor that informed my attempted communication with meaning. I tried to fill-out a questionnaire at a doctor’s office, but my hand-writing became an illegible scrawl that masked my inability adequately to describe the sensation of being poisoned. I couldn't find the vocabulary to cry out: "Doctor, I am in full blinking eclipse. My body hurts, my mind races from one obtrusive and disconnected thought to the next, and sometimes I feel as if I'm going to faint." What I didn't tell my doctors, family and friends is that my consciousness was filled with “suicidal ideation,” shorthand for existential dread and hopelessness where I wanted to escape further psychic torture and agony.

Looking back I might as well have been treated with voodoo, chicken claws, leeches, rooster blood, maybe some arsenic — all rolled into a gelatin tablet made from horse hooves and marketed by glad-handing pharmaceutical reps who barely could get their tongues around the multi-syllabled, ponderous Latin inflections required to bill-out their pills at stratospheric prices. But, wait, big pharma needs those hefty margins to pay for their marks' "educational" seminars, mini-vacations at Club Med, and lengthy faux testimonials from leading medical lights who neglect to mention to prescribing physicians that a public relations flack had ghost-written their research trial reviews, which big pharma had underwritten to begin with!

So, what do you get when you put the “sin” into “levofloxacin”? You get sick. Big pharma can make-up all the high fallutin’ Latin names in their multimillion-dollar laboratories, embargo their advertisements' release on infomercials during t.v. show intermissions, and continue to spend twice as much on marketing as they do on research & development, but it all boils down to this: feckless corporates abetted by toothless regulators have reaped a bowl-full of profit and left too much devastation & misery in their wake. Even assuming its best intentions and expensive brilliance, how can a medical system remain in denial about its own missteps? Have we become so litigious and politically correct that it’s too expensive for the medical industry to govern its own? Botched pharmaceutical intervention, they name is deregulation!

I check back from time-to-time on this website. For me it's returning to the crime scene. It's like looking at an Alfred Hitchcock film, the one about a sociopath who observes a sea of humanity from a top of the ferris wheel, and concludes that humans are just so many ants for whom the observer should not be overly concerned. And so a large pharmaceutical company devised levaquin. From a top of the ferris wheel it appeared to big pharma that its medication helped many people and squashed only a few. It's a tad sinister. The anonymity of it all. The stunning ineptitude of the FDA. The lassitude. The profit motive. A pharmaceutical scourge adversely impacts the health & welfare of thousands upon thousands of ignorant and hopeful patients who put their trust in their doctors' hands. Harried doctors in turn put their trust in hapless pharmaceutical representatives who pass along trial packages of ludicrously-named meds, which the reps urge upon doctors too harried to read the insert's small print. In some instances the patients become deathly sick from the prescribed medications. But the patinet cannot discern cause and effect. "Are you nuts?" asked the doctor. You want me to believe that the pill caused the pain? No way. I'm your doctor, and I believe it not at all." But the pill DID cause the pain. Image the aftermath of levaquin where the patient experiences insomnia, depression, heart palpitations, profuse sweating, eye floaters, headaches, tendonopathy in the calves, ringing-in-the-ear, anxiety, and intense agitation. "Gee, doc, I only suffered a mite from prostatitis BEFORE I took your pills. But it seems like my life is on-hold, in suspended animation, after I took three pills from your five-pill prescription. Do you think there is any connection between taking the pills and the fact I feel so awful that I want to die?" Strangely the medical profession by and large sees no evil, hears no evil, smells no evil. The patient feels as if he were in one of H G Wells' short stories about a small island where medical experiments are performed routinely on caged and mute humanoids. The experimenters profess ignorance, visitors to the island remain ignorant about the experiments. Only the human guinea pigs know the full extent of the horror, but they remain drugged and too incapacitated to make any impact even upon the well intentioned. It's really ghoulish. It's fiendish. It's today's reality for many for whom the health care industry has run amok and gobbles up 16% of GNP.

Has anyone with hair loss/lack of regrowth seen improvement after having Mirena removed? I'd love to hear from woman that have had hair loss/regrowth problems (that wasn't due to post-pregnancy). This is my biggest complaint. I've always had very thick (annoyingly so hair) and now I look like a different person. My scalp shows everywhere, my hair is thin and I don't have any regrowth to even give me hope. I don't have a history of female hair loss in my family. I've had my IUD since August and my last baby was 2 years ago. My Dr. says it's stress...but wouldn't she be stressed too if she was balding at 35! I'm looking for any confirmation that the hair growth gets better. Other side effects include, ocular migraine (I thought I was having a stroke!) vision issues and new eye floaters and anxiety. I can live with most of these, but my hair loss is killing me! Any good news out there from those with a removal?
-Iwantmyhairback

I have been on Loestrin 24fe for the past three years. The first two years were great; no period since Dec 06, it's very rare that I have any spotting. Since June 2008, my health has gone down hill. I have had extreme weight gain (20 lbs), retaining fluid, fatigue,terrible migraines, memory has gotten poor, lack of concentration, depression has gotten worse, very very moody and will cry at the least little thing. I have also experience eye floaters and eye twitching. My dr. wants to change my BC to Yaz, but the horror stories are the same. At this point, I really don't know what to do. I have been on BC for 18 yrs total. When I first started taking Loestrin, it was wonderful.....up until last year. I am still taking it, not sure if I should switch to another type or totally go off of BC to give my body a rest.

Wow. Thank god for this Bulletin! I was diagnosed with hypertension at age 28
and tried a variety of drugs with no control over the BP. So, about 2 1/2 - 3 years ago, I was prescribed 100MG of Toprol XL which seemed to control it well, but with debilitating long term illness. I had no idea until today that Toprol XL was causing similar grief to others. The horrible symptoms that I have been experiencing now for several years are Extreme Chronic Fatigue, Profuse Cold Clammy Sweating, Dizzy spells, weight gain, seeing specs of light and thousands of eye floaters, severe depression, muscle aches, headaches.

After reading about others with similar side effects, I am confident that it's from this medication. I have had all kinds of testing done including T3 & T4 Throid levels and a full array of blood work with NO LUCK! Regardless of the consequences, I am going to quit this damn medicine today because it appears to take 5 weeks or so to get it out of the body to notice a difference. I am so desperate for change. It is ruining my life because I can
't wake up, I'm always tired even though I get 10-14 hours of sleep. My wife and kids are bummed because I have no energy to do anything, EVER!

If you have any other suggestions or would like to comment about this.

Sincerely,

Sean

I have had doxy about 9 months ago for just 10 days. Since then i had tingling in my hands and feet (on and off), leg pains, disturbing ankle pain, eye floaters (constant, esp in bright light). Feel like i have poor circulation in my limbs. Please anyone knows how he/she recovered similar symptoms?

I have been taking the drug for almost two years and I still cough all night, I am sick on my stomach, I have eye floaters, I am so tired I quit my job after 25 years, I am stopping the drug today. I can't feel any worse.

Dear Silke,sarah and all new comers.

Well on Nov 9th i hit the 12month mark off yasmin and to all the newcomers i owuld like to say i have been reading these posts for the whole year and you are all where i was and in some ways still am. Do not get me wrong I HAVE RETURNED TO WORK, I CAN LEAVE MY HOME, i do not get someone to ring me at 7am every day to see if i am still alive as i truly thought i would die in my sleep and all that was my anxiety.Sarah i too got charles linden tapes and they helped me a great deal i ordered them over the net one night when i was desperate and i was so thankful. take each day as it comes and i know that is so so hard i remember last xmas being exactly where you all are, silke telling me i was going to be ok and as i served xmas lunch i was pooping into my computer to read posts to reassure myself i was not going insane. I have come so far and so will you all. Some things are still there, i still get heart palps sometimes and Bilberry is great for the eye floaters i got it in a health shop and its great, I gain weight like no tomorrow and my gp is a woman whom agress with everything being said here and this week has ran all the relevent tests again to see where i am at. I am also seeing a chranio chiro whom changes out seratonin levels and he is running a urine analysis of he hormoes and metablics so stay tuned to that result. I just want you to know that its so hard but its gonna get better i gave my job up i was so full of anxiety etc and now i am back at work and loving it, Silke do you still get the bloating as my face is puffing a lot lately and the chiro is waiting for the results to get me something
sorry for rambling
take care,and merry xmas to all

LISA

Hello all!
I have been off of Yasmin now 14 months. All my physical symptoms have cleared up except eye floaters and a sinus infection. I feel great physically! However, I have just been diagnosed with anxiety disorder. I stay nervous pretty much all the time, although the panic attacks have subsided. My doctor gave me Lexapro, which I have not taken yet....I'm scared of it. In fact this doctor visit increased my anxiety by quite a bit just to hear that kind of news. Have any of you actually taken this drug or others? Do I really need it or will this nervousness subside as well? Is there anything else I can do that does not require medication?
I'm praying for all of you! Be strong and hold on to your faith!
Virginia

I have been taking prednisone for five year for sarcoidosis,an autoimmune disease that targets first your lungs and then your immune system attacks any and can attack all muscles of the body. It left me with scaretissues in my lung.started with 70mg. down now to 20 and have been down to 5. every time i think i can come off my breathing gets worse but i think the medication also causes shortness of breath. i have lost vision in one eye ,no central vision since this med.break out in rashes.feels like iam disconnected mentally and phycially eye floaters in the other eye weight gain of about 50 pounds that will not move and i don't eat hardly anything.nervousness,moodswings and let me not forget the hypertension that i never had until this med. Now iam taking meds to doctor the problems the p rednisone created. CANNOT WIN FOR LOSING!!!!!!!!!!!!!

MEDICATIONS.COM MOST LIKELY SAVED MY LIFE! THANK YOU! My doctors also refused to help me despite my pleas that something was indeed wrong with me while taking Yasmin. I have now been Yasmin free for 11 months. My side effects STILL consist of dizziness, nausea, headaches, eye floaters, and extreme panic episodes right after my period in the mornings (although they are not nearly as bad as they were).

Silke, I tried Valerian root pills instead of Clonozepam at my last attack. It worked wonderfully!

I NEVER HAD ANY HEALTH PROBLEMS AT ALL BEFORE TAKING THIS PILL.

Virginia

Angie,
YES! I have been off of Yasmin for 9 months and still have severe eye floaters, dizziness, dry eyes, and racing heart. I have had my glasses prescription changed 5 times this past year, and I am still unable to wear contact lenses (they make me dizzy). Most of the time I feel as if I am looking through a jar of jelly....

Virginia

Hi everyone

I have been off of Yasmin for 5 months now. I know alot of you out there are still suffering, but please know that it does get better with time. Although I am feeling a whole lot better, I still sometimes have muscle weakness, especially in my arms. Today, I have what feels like tendonitis in my right arm. I was wondering, has anyone else had this lingering symptom from being on Yasmin? I also have eye floaters which I did not have prior to Yasmin. Has anyone else experienced this?

Thanks

severe anxiety, panic, rapid heart rate, diarrhea, clostridium difficile, dizziness, numbness in feet, electrical shock sensations, leg and arm weakness, tremor in hands, rash, burning skin, insomnia, depersonalization, severe depression, chest pain, knee caps felt like they were going to pop off when I would walk, fatigued easily, memory loss, inability to concentrate, eye floaters, weight loss of 20 pounds in 2 weeks, loss of taste, sensitivty to sound/light, GERD, sensitivity to hot temperatures, night sweats. some symptoms still persist after 4 months

eye floaters