Healthcare profession symptoms and conditions

I am a 54 year old male who started taking Lipitor about 4 years ago. It seemed OK at first, but over the next several years I began to have increasing amounts of joint pain after exercise. Nor muscle pain, joint pain. And it seemed to be a result of exercise. By the time I stopped it, I was hurting after everything, not just exercise. I felt better within the first two weeks, but it took about 4 months for me to be able to exercise vigorously again. Over the years I seemed to have forgotten how much vitality I used to have. I am a physician, and because of the long lag time until I felt better, I wondered whether improvement might have related to other factors, so after about 5 months I decided to restart Lipitor. It surprised me that after just one dose, I got back all of the joint pain and fatigue when I was at my worst on Lipitor. I was really hurting. Needless to say, I didn't take any more.

Coincidentally, a physician friend of mine who had statin induced polyneuropathy had a similar experience. After his symptoms went away he found that after only one dose the entire polyneuropathy came back.

Stopping and restarting the drug is a way to test the correlation between the drug and the side effect. For such a large spectrum of side effects to recur after only a single dose, it argues that the problems that my friend and I had was due to some sort of immune memory response. I have not seen this in the medical literature.

I am off it now for about 8 months and am able to comfortably play singles tennis and jog - much more energy (and I took 200 mg of CoQ10 a day with the Lipitor).

NuvaRing was great for me for years and then I began experiencing most of the symptoms noted by others. However, when my LYMPH NODES become ENLARGED AND PAINFUL I realized it was time for me to take out the ring and give my body a rest from the foreign substance. Once I removed the ring completely, within two-weeks my HAIR BEGAN TO FALL OUT each time I washed it. After weeks, my JOINTS became so INFLAMED I could not walk even though I had been working out four-days per week for many years prior. I also experienced HAIR AND SKIN TEXTURE CHANGES, and ONGOING FLU-LIKE SYMPTOMS which included: BODY ACHES, SEVERE FATIGUE, NIGHT SWEATS (DRENCHING), HEADACHES AND WEIGHT LOSS. I saw numerous doctors to try to figure out what was happening to my body. After over a year, I was diagnosed with an AUTOIMMUNE condition (SLE). It has been two-years now, since permanently removing NuvaRing, and my condition has improved with time but my IMMUNE SYSTEM is still out of whack and my LYMPH NODES ARE STILL ENLARGED throughout my body. If anyone else has these systems and has been diagnosed with an AUTOIMMUNE DISORDER after using NuvaRing, please respond. CAUTION: please be careful young women as added hormones are not good for our bodies and really should not be pushed so readily by the health care profession. Also, keep in mind that your doctor will not back you when you are experiencing problems from medications that he/she prescribed. You will ultimately be told that the medication did not cause the problem in order for him/her to avoid becoming a party to a lawsuit.