Medications that have made you ill

[slowereveryyear]

I had a problem with reflux for which my GP prescribed Esomeprazol. This helped and I kept taking it for years.
After having severe bowel pains with constipation or diarrhea for many weeks I was sent to see a gastroenterologist. He asked if I was taking any medication and hearing what I was on said 'that is the problem'.
I stopped taking them and within a month I felt normal.

A friend said she had a similar experience but as a retired nurse she quickly realised the cause of her discomfort and stopped her treatment..

I wonder how common bad side effects from medication are?

 

[glasgowcyclist]

The information sheet that comes with each medication tells you the various possible side effects, and is usually an alarmingy long list.

 

[cyberknight]

The 1 st meds for reynauds gave me hot flushes and made cycling over sweaty.

 

[classic33]

A lot more common than people might think. Especially if something else is being used at the same time.
A slight change of one can throw up all sorts of problems.

 

[wakemalcolm]

I had a problem with reflux for which my GP prescribed Esomeprazol. This helped and I kept taking it for years.
After having severe bowel pains with constipation or diarrhea for many weeks I was sent to see a gastroenterologist. He asked if I was taking any medication and hearing what I was on said 'that is the problem'.
I stopped taking them and within a month I felt normal.

A friend said she had a similar experience but as a retired nurse she quickly realised the cause of her discomfort and stopped her treatment..

I wonder how common bad side effects from medication are?

Did they at any point investigate the cause of the reflux or just throw medication at you?

Sounds like an unfortunate case of the National Treatment Service rather than the National Health Service

 

[slowereveryyear]

Did they at any point investigate the cause of the reflux or just throw medication at you?

Sounds like an unfortunate case of the National Treatment Service rather than the National Health Service

He tried various other medications on me but none worked. To be fair at the time I was eating late in the evening and in spite of him saying to eat my main meal earlier or at lunch time I didn't.

 

[Andy in Germany]

I threw up violently when I took morphine.

This is not fun when the morphine is prescribed while recovering from a hernia operation.

We can often tell medication clients are prescribed from side effects. Substitutes for illegal rugs can often cause sweating. I've had a client with Schizophrenia, who turned out to be highly intelligent when his medication was changed and stopped deadening his intellect.

 

[FrankCrank]

During my engineering days, a lad there had a grinding spark go into his eye, so the first aider administered optrex to see if it shifted the irritant. A moment later, he was in a panic, and rushed off to stick his head under a tap of running water. He said some of the optrex had gotten into his eye. Took a long time to live that one down

 

[gbb]

Co-codamol, and by extension i assume coedine affects me really badly. Makes me woozy, nauseous, wobbly, i feel awful if i take it, like having the flu.. took me a few mistakes to realise what was causing it.

 

[All uphill]

Finasteride, for enlarged prostate, really messed me up. I lost all sense of myself as a person, I was a robot for a couple of weeks.

It was very educational; I found it amazing that a tiny tablet could have such a huge effect. What if I had done something criminal while under the drug's effect?

 

[classic33]

Paracetamol, interactions with anti-epilepsy medication had me in hospital overnight.
It pushed/increased the anti-epilepsy medication level in the blood beyond the safe limit.

 

[SteveH80]

So far I've never had a bad reaction to any legitimate medication but I still read the instructions and watch out for anything.
Although I did once have an ear infection that didn't respond to the antibiotics. A change to a different type of antibiotic fixed it, but it was a bit scary getting close up and personal with an antibiotic resistant infection.

 

[nogoodnamesleft]

I've always regarded medication side effects as a question of degree. I'm no medic but I've thought any medication will have some good effects eg improving your condition and some bad side effects and it becomes a question as to how good the good effects are and how bad the side effects are which probably varies on an individual basis and could change over time and with many internal and external factors.