Oral steroid symptoms and conditions

After taking macrobid for about a week to treat my UTI, I developed chronic hives. It's been over 4 months now and I am still suffering badly. I was prescribed oral steroid for a week at first but it hasn't really helped. The hives keep coming back. I take claritin every day which helps a little bit but only temporarily. This is the last thing I need when I am trying to get pregnant. The stress of it all. If your doctor prescribes Macrobid (Nitrofurantoin-Maco), beware of the side affects!

I'm not sure what to think about Advair. My 16 yr old son has asthma & has been on Advair for a few years & did well for the most part. While on vacation last summer he came down w/2 ear infections & quickly went downhill. He had an attack & was nearly closed up completely; went to the ER & received several breathing treatments, a steroid shot & was released w/oral steroid prescription/antibiotics. The next afternoon he had another attck & went back to the ER. He was given breathing treatments & then an IV steroid treatment. He immediately got a raging headache & got morphine for the pain, started severely hallucinating & violently flipped for hours. He eventually was well enough to leave & woke up the next morn as a vegetable. Didn't know where he was...was hallucinating, couldn't walk etc. We went back home to his family doctor. It turned out the steroids was the culprit. I didn't know Advair was a form of steroid, & the IV steroids caused his psychosis, & he just had too much steroids in his system overall. A few days later he came out of it. My mother had said she heard Advair can cause severe infections & actually worsen asthma. I asked his DR & he said there were other reasons for those problems which didn't pertain to my son, so he's still taking Advair.

Ever since that episode, he is much more susceptible to EVERYTHING. First semester of school he missed a total of 10 days. He'd also been having horrible mood swings, could not sleep at night & then went into a depression. So he was precribed a low dosage of Elavil. This was about 10 weeks ago. 12 days ago he started wheezing & coughing, so we did his at home nebulizer treatments. He went to the DR & was diagnosed w/bronchitus & was given a Z-pak. Last weekend he worsened, took him back to the DR Monday & was diagnosed w/walking pnemonia. He was given another Z-pak & oral steroids. He's slowly getting better, but has missed 9 days of school & I don't know when he'll be well enough to return.

My mom researched Advair again & found that you shouldn't take it w/Elavil, which he is still taking. She also found that side effects from Advair are eveything my son is dealing with. My husband thinks she's nuts, but I have to wonder can Advair actually be making my son worse?

I first posted about three weeks ago re: my 3 1/2 year old son who was taken off Singulair around the first of September. All the bizarre symptoms (mood swings, itching, tummy aches, etc.) he was experiencing are gone and he is still doing great in that regard. However, he caught a cold after starting back to preschool (which always turns into an asthma episode for him) and, as expected, we ended up having to use an oral steroid to pull him through. So ... we were happily off Singulair but still needed a method to deal with what would inevitably be more problems from his asthma. I had heard that some asthmatics have success when changing their diet and so decided that we really had nothing to lose and started to research this issue. While we knew that my son was not allergic to the foods that are typically known as allergens (due to past allergy testing), I learned that a food intolerance is totally different from a food allergy, and does not show up with testing. Most all of the food you buy at the store these days is loaded with preservatives, chemicals and artificial colors. I learned that sulfites can be particularly dangerous for asthmatics and that many also react to food colorings. While these things do not cause an immediate reaction in my son, the theory is that when these foods are consumed regularly, they weaken his immune system and thus make him more suscepticle to have an asthma episode when he does get a cold. There is a book called Fed Up with Asthma that explores this theory that was written by Sue Dengate out of Australia. While we have not gone on what she calls a "failsafe" elimination diet (it seems a little extreme for us), we did decide to experiment with buying all organic foods to see what happens and started on that quest about 2-3 weeks ago. Foods that are certified organic are supposed to be free of pesticides, preservatives, colors, etc. Last week, my son got another cold and this is the first time in 3 years that we have not had to use an oral steroid to get him over it. It was just like he was any other kid with a little cold. Another thing that I read about was that many asthmatics have a reaction to milk (which the medical community flatly denies) and the one lingering symptom we had after stopping the Singulair was a persistent cough that was not associated with illness, was not accompanied by a wheeze, and had no obvious origin. We switched my son to soy milk about 2 weeks ago, and the cough is gone. I also have a 17-month-old who is asthma-free (at least so far) but does have eczema, which I have learned is also thought to be affected by the consumption of cow's milk. When we switched from cow's milk to soy milk, his eczema completely cleared up, too. 6 months ago I would have laughed at someone who said that what I thought was healthy food I bought at the grocery store contributed to my son's asthma, but we have just had too many coincidences to ignore what we are seeing. I just figured I had nothing to lose by trying the organic route, and I'm glad I did it. Good luck.

Side effects I've experienced: weight gain in stomach and breasts, pains in chest and joints, palpitations in heart and brain, depression, tiredness and weakness, dificulty concentrating esp. when reading, and a change in voice that everyone notices

MY STORY
I have been taking advair for two years under the belief that it did not have the sideaffects associated with an oral steroid.
About six months ago I started having chest pains so severe at night I thought I was having a heart attack. I went to my GP the next day and we concluded that perhaps I had exercised to vigorously the day before (I had joined a club to lose the weight I had gained, in the stomach and chest area, since taking advair and to build up my muscles because I thought I was losing strenth due to my age, 47. My legs, arms and butt are fit, but my stomach and breasts look like I'm having a baby). In the last three months I have also experienced hip pain that would wake me up one or two nights a week. I made another appt with my GP and he thought it was time for me to see a specialist. Last week, after one Xray, the specialist told me I have lost half of the cartilage around my hip bones. He had me go for blood tests to figure out why and what we can do. Two nights later, I couldn't fall asleep because of the heart palpitations and, after finally falling asleep, I woke up with what sounded and felt like a "PING" in my brain (It felt as though a nerve or vessel had exploded at its end). That morning it dawned on me that it could be the advair, so I got on line to google and typed in ADVAIR SIDE EFFECTS and found this website (it is only fifth in the list....it should be number one!) I just called the specialist to find out that I have no bone disease in my blood, so tomorrow when I see my allergist I'm going to have him wean me off this nasty drug and get my life back.

I never would have taken advair, if I thought that it was so dangerous. If anyone else is having joint pain, you really should see a specialist and have an xray to see if there is a problem....as the person below has said repeatedly in her messages, "listen to your body" and do something about it.
If there is a class action, count me in....I feel as though I've been duped into being a tester for this drug. I wish I had known!