Lack of education symptoms and conditions

I was 50 and the doctor prescribed lipitor 10mg since my cholesterol had doubled in the past twelve months to 300. I took it for four months and began to have pain in one leg just below the knee. I had talked to a woman about 65 years old once who was walking on the sides of her feet and I had asked her what medical problem she had. She explained that her Lipitor had caused this terrible pain. You would think that I would have refused to take this drug. You see the doctor had already prescribed a very large dose of fish oil per day and the cholesterol had not fallen. However, I began taking it. About two weeks before my enzyme checkup I began to notice the pain in the leg just below my knee and I stopped taking the Lipitor. I expected the pain to subside, but it did not. My cholesterol level had risen and my doctor asked me if I was still taking the Lipitor. I explained that I had been of it for about two weeks. The doctor insisted that the pain probably wasn't associated with the Lipitor. The reason being my enzyme level was within the range of acceptable. I began taking it again. The doctor wanted to have another test within four weeks to check enzyme levels again. This time the enzyme levels were borderline high. So the doc recommended stopping the Lipitor for a while and then another enzyme level check. You see, my body was telling me something. The only new factor in my medications other than blood pressure was the Lipitor. It has been about three weeks since I stopped the Lipitor, yet I am continuing with even more pain in tops of feet and above one knee a know seems to have appeared. It is sore and feels like it is bruised. I am not a doctor, but I had done some investigating Lipitor on the internet and read that in some patients the Lipitor actually causes small to large fissures in the arteries of the heart. Also, the muscles begin to attack themselves, thus the pain and atrophy. I am going to start taking flax oil. One cardiologist reported that he two cases a week of heart attacks due to Lipitor. He was enraged that Lipitor is still being prescribed and manufactured. I just hope it doesn't take years to regain my original self without pain. I am an active person who likes to work outside, garden, snow-ski, and anything else I want to do. I am trying to search for a detox program for Lipitor overdose, not that I have overdosed. According to my body's signals, I have overdosed on a toxic drug. I pray that returning to normal won't take as long as I have heard some people say it has taken them. Please try some other alternative to Lipitor and the other debilitating statin drugs. I will have to start an exercise program, even though I have put it off for years. I hope my laziness about my physical fitness hasn't crippled me for life. I am 20 lbs overweight and never took it seriously. I hope others will discontinue to take this life-threatening and debilitating drug!!!!!!!!!!1

Just one question I have been on this stuff at the beginning dose for less than a week. My eyes hurt, my head is about to explode, I am sick as a dog, I lost 5 pounds, I can't eat, constipated, can't sleep, can't function, ringing in my ears, and the ADD is unbelievable. I am a medical transcriptionist I kind of need to be able to work, no work, no pay. Topamax is going bye-bye for sure but how long till the side effects go away?

I have just been told by my primary care doctor that he cannot continue to okay any more time for me on my state disability.

He asked if I was going back to work ( I've been out 6 months ) and I told him my legs are still so weak and sore so often I cannot be on them for more than one to two hours without them feeling like they are going to go out from under me, as well as my arms to a lesser ( 50% ) degree and often the rest of my body if I do anything physical for more than 1/2 hour to one hour. And that I was also still totally depressed and feeling I could have an anxiety attack at any time which I do maybe every 3rd, or 4th day....so that no, I could not work at this time. I was still feeling about as totally disabled as I ever have been in my 54 years.

I also told him my feelings about Levaquin perhaps being the cause of all this. He got very agitated and ended the visit and said it was not the Levaquin but I would not be able to understand his explanation as to why it could not be the Levaquin because of my lack of education in the medical science field.

When I said that every symptom I have had since the second day of taking Levaquin were symptoms that I have never experienced in my entire 54 year life and I wasn't having "any" of these during the 4 or 5 days previous to being prescribed Levaquin when I had the flu and beginning bronchitis, he just wouldn't even comment.

He just stood up and turned to walk away. Then he stopped and said, "look...one thing we are sure of...is that you have serious mental health issues, and that's all we can find outside of some maybe beginning Crohns Disease with the results not coming in until later next month from the U.C.S.F. Med Center tests.

My last comments that I "tried" to say to this doctor as he was walking away were that " Why would I have myself taken to our local ER 3 times in one week as soon as I started taking Levaquin with terrifying symptoms like all the ones you all are describing here on this board from incredible insomnia to massive weakness and panic attacks, etc., when even with the flu I wasn't feeing that concerned and my 54 year long local resident history does not show a pattern of ever having to rush to an ER that often? And why....WHY would he nor any of the ER doctors ever once give one seconds thought to the "possibility" that I was having a sever reaction to Levaquin...especially when the symptoms I was experiencing are ones that are listed as those that may occur to certain people taking this powerful antibiotic? Can't we even consider this "levaquin reaction" a "remote" possibility?

His answer..."no." " I'll see you in 2 months."

If this doctors comments and behavior towards me isn't the most obvious and disheartening conveyance of dismissal, what is? This doctor would love to have me just never call him back. And sadly, so many doctors are acting exactly like him in my case.

And I've never had a problem like this before in my entire life! BOy, if a doctor doesn't see something on a test...there minds shut down on any other possibilites. I think also they are constantly thinking about the insurance companies questioning them about care provided when they aren't finding anything. So the whole system is geared toward dumping you when normal testing can't find your problem...and doctors are so insurance comapny minded...much more so than patient minded. OR, there is something else in these doctors training or mind set , that makes them very quickly dump their patients into the "psychiatric" area when they hit a dead end. And to do this to someone who has never had to see a psychiatrist in their life before...is what I would call a complete breaching of medical ethics.

When your primary care doctor gives you the "psychiatric brush off" after 6 months of torturous suffering, it's a pretty tough place to be as far as encouragement and knowing where to go from here. You have to take a deep breath and muster up even more courage and you realize that every month with this Levaquin problem...you are more and more on your own to just suffer with it. What a sad weight to add to this already horrible nightmare.