Skin cells symptoms and conditions

Ive been on the nuvaring for about four months and for three of those months everything was fine. my doctor told me that i could leave it in for 3 weeks and have a period for a week or three weeks and change to a new ring. well being that most women hate periods, i decided not to have one four four months. But now i am having this weird brown discharge(no smell) and i have had reoccurring yeast infections (white discharge, itching, burning). this skin around my vagina was raw for a week or so. gross i know. can anybody tell me whats up with this. i have been overly emotional because i thought something was wrong with me. is it?

I am a male of 67 years old. I took Lipitor for a year, and after a few months of taking it, I felt muscle pains in my arms and shoulders, as well as my back. I felt weak and could hardly put my socks on by myself. I told my family doctor that I thought the problem was caused by LIpitor. He said it couldn't be possible, but he couldn't figure out what was wrong, so he sent me to a rheumatologist, who gave me an initial diagnosis of polymyalgia rheumatica. I went back for a checkup, and although the sed rate was normal, the C-reactive protein was elevated. He felt his diagnosis was an accurate one. He prescribed prednisone for me. I had some doubts about it, since I am diabetic, and was concerned about the elevated blood sugar it might cause. Well, it did elevate my blood sugar, and I weaned myself off it within three months. My blood sugar went back to normal, and while the prednisone helped the symptoms of muscle pain and aches, after I stopped it, the pain returned with a vengeance.

About a year passed after discontinuing the prednisone, and I felt worse and worse. Any time I engaged in physical activity, such as yard work, I was almost incapacitated for two or three days. I felt weaker and weaker, and by now, my activity is about ten per cent of what it was three or four years ago. I am unable to do anything physical without paying a heavy price.

I would tell the doctor that I felt the problem was caused by the Lipitor. He would dismiss my comments, saying that the pain should have gone away after discontinuing Lipitor. He sent me back to the rheumatologist with results of recent blood tests. Both the sed rate and C-reactive protein were normal. The rheumatologist touched my back and other areas, which caused me to jump. He said it might be fibromyalgia. I told him again that I thought it was caused by the Lipitor. He said the same thing my GP had said: if it had been the Lipitor, the pain would have gone away when I stopped taking it. I know the Lipitor caused the pain, because I tried red yeast rice for a couple months. The pain increased to almost unbearable, so I discontinued the red yeast rice. If I were not susceptible to the pain from the Lipitor, would the red yeast rice have increased the pain?

So here I am with a fuzzy diagnosis from the rheumatologist, and no clue from my family doctor (that he will verbalize, at any rate). My life has gone steadily downhill. I used to be a strong, active person, but now I can do very little, and my strength is a shadow of what it formerly was. What can I do?

This past week has in large part been spent under the painful influence of a potent and fairly common prescription drug that I didn't need to take. I want you to be aware of the possibility that this kind of thing happening to you or your loved one. We see the prescription drug commercials and their disclaimers on TV and are amused that anyone would take a drug with a long list of horrible side effects for some rather minor ailment. And you always think it happens to some one else.

On Sept. 19, I went to a local dermatologist to have her look at a very small rash on my arm and a small cyst on my back. She extracted the "skin cells" in my back after using a local anesthetic and sent me home with 2 prescriptions, one for a lotion for the rash and, I thought, an antibiotic that the doctor had mentioned for the extraction. I had only the prescription for the oral medicine filled as I had also been given a small sample size of lotion and the area of rash was no more than a 2 inch square size.

On the 20th I began taking the pills from a large card with the dosage marked for day and night doses in decreasing amounts. By the the 25th I was jittery and miserable from the inside out, could hardly breathe, or talk, my muscles were all tight and tense and hurting, my stomach was upset but I could hardly get enough food, I was completely without any energy at all. By the next day it was all I could do to get out of bed and shower, I certainly could not work or function normally, in addition to the other symptoms, my body ached, head ached, not to mention how mean I felt. I stopped taking the meds after the morning dose on the 27th, when it occurred to me that this was not the result of "stress" from taking my mother on a 6 hour trip to see her brother in hospice care on the 23rd for two days. The next day I called the pharmacy to find out what I had been prescribed and they told me Dexpak, steroid. The symptoms have continued through the next days and have begun to slowly and slightly subside, but as I write this on the 30th I am still far from feeling like myself and my eyes have become cloudy, making it difficult to see. I made it to church this morning, but that's all I have been able to do since last week.

It is astounding to see the list of extreme reasons to prescribe this potent drug especially for a tiny rash on an otherwise very healthy person. Then the list of side effects, of which I have virtually every one, frightens me more and my concern is that they may not all be reversable. There are several things I didn't do along this path of taking the meds that I could have avoided all this if I had not just trusted that they were antibiotics (which I never got), and actually read the material they give you with the prescription when you pick it up. Even so, it begs the question, why would this have been prescribed in the first place?