Started at 10 mg/day, then doubled to 20 and finally 40mg lisinopril with 25mg HCTZ..
After being upped to 40mg I started getting a itchy lump in my throat that lead to an amazing amount of cloudy white mucus. This would usually occur later in the day and especially when I tried to lay down to sleep. Lungs feel fine, no wheezing, rumble or pain. Nostrils sometimes clog a little but not enough to explain where all the mucus was coming from. Throat doesn't really hurt except when I used a lot of generic sore throat spray.
Doctor mentioned the possibility of acid reflux or a seasonal allergy and give me generic Claritin which didn't help a bit. I'm 56 and can't say I've ever had a seasonal allergy in my life but he said they can develop at anytime so I was hoping he was right. When the weather turned cold and the symptoms remained I even thought I was allergic to something in my home, new drywall, fiberglass, mold something.
After considering the possibility of a reaction to lisinopril or terbinafine I started googling to find posts that described my reaction to a tee.
Besides the cough/mucous I've had a pounding heart, anxiety, fear of dying not knowing what was wrong etc.
Lisinopril seemed to bring my pressure down at the one month point so my Doctor doubled it to bring it down another 15 points. Three weeks later instead of going down it went back up so he doubled again and added the water pill. Today when I went to the Doctor it was still up and I told him about my web research. He agree it was not working for me anyway and I suppose he believed my suspicions about the side effects, at least for me.
He asked me "You're self pay aren't you?" as if just because I had to pay for the stuff myself I'd rather take the $4.00/month crap rather than pay for what I need. If you're self pay you even get 20% off if you pay within 30 days. I bet if I'd walked in there with insurance I'd have erg's, mri's, all that overpriced stuff.
Anyway he put me on Bystolic (30 days free samples :)) which I think I could detect a bit more confidence in his voice that it would actually work. I mean I'd much rather pay $4/month for generics if it worked and didn't make me feel like crap but I'll gladly pay the over inflated $50/month price for something that actually works without making me feel so much worse.
Just a brief followup:
It was the third night when I went to bed and noticed I hadn't pulled the trash can up beside my bed to spit into that I realized I was not going to need it. At that time any doubts I had as to the cause were gone and it felt good to know I had gotten it right. It's a couple days past that now and there's no lump in my throat and I'm not coughing up at all.
My chest is not pounding either and I feel far less anxious although I'm not sure how much of that is due to stopping the Lisinopril and how much is due to taking Bystolic but I suspect the Lisinopril was causing that too since I don't recall those feeling before starting it.
Lisinopril may be a life saver for some/most but it was not for me. :)
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