Look into my eyes symptoms and conditions

I was started on Advair HFA about 35 days ago. A little background about me is that I'm 35 years old, in good physical shape. I'm a competitive cyclists doing road races anywhere from 45-100 miles, I work out 2-4 hours everyday. I've had lifelong chronic asthma, but have fought the disease with my healthy lifestyle. I also play the saxophone.

Since I've been on Advair I've developed a constant sore throat. Been coughing up stuff constantly when I'm out training on my bike. Can't seem to sleep for more than a few hours at a time. The worst side affect has been the leg cramps which are killing my training for up coming races. I have constant leg cramps that force me to get out of bed over and over to work them out. My energy levels have dropped to the point that I can't do even half a workout without being totally wiped out. This is coming from a guy that averages 60miles a day on the bike, the other day I couldn't even do 15 miles and had to stop from the constant cramps and tiredness. This stuff is a nightmare. I've gone back to using nothing but my albuterol inhaler. I'll continue to do lung exercises 4 times a day and completely clean up my diet and basically get this stuff out of my system. Let this be a warning that you can't get something positive without something negative as well.

I started taking Topamax for migraines. I had been on the medication (about 25 mg 1x/day) for 7 days. On the 8th day, my doctor told me to double my dose and take 2 - 25 mg pills each day. I did that on the 8th day.

It was Memorial Day, 2006, and I had taken a pill that morning. By about 10am, I was dizzy, had blurred vision, a pounding headache, and slurred speech. When I got home, I went straight to bed thinking I could sleep it off. I woke up about 2 hours later with the most horrible pain you can imagine and was completely blind. I called for my husband, who rushed me to the hospital. I spent 4 days in the hospital completely sedated. I threw up constantly and subsequently lost 14 pounds in those 4 days because I could not keep anything down due to the pain. I saw every kind of doctor and no one knew how to help me or what was wrong.

On the 5th day, the hospital had me see an eye specialist. He took one look into my eyes and ran out of the exam room. He returned shortly and told me that I had acute angle glaucoma and that I was lucky I had come in to see him. He told me that if I had waited, I would have been permanently blind in a matter of a few hours. He had to do laser surgery to blast holes into the backs of my eyes to relieve the pressure that had built up.

He asked me what medication I had been on. I told him Topamax. He did some research and found that glaucoma is one of the side effects of the medication. When I went back 3 weeks later for a follow-up visit, I had started getting my eye sight back. The doctor told me that since I had been in, he had 2 other people with the same diagnosis all brought on by Topamax. He then called the FDA and told them they needed to list that side effect in a more visible place on the drug pamphlet.