Toxic Healthcare: How I Was Poisoned by Medications and Doctor Ignorance

Adverse Drug Reactions (ADRs) kill an estimated 106,000 Americans a year and harm – sometimes permanently – another 2.7 million.

But don’t expect your doctor to know that. 

And don’t expect them to acknowledge it if you are among the unfortunate many who have a crippling reaction to your meds.

In the 10 years that I have been disabled from Fluoroquinolone Associated Disability (FQAD), I’ve seen more than 100 doctors and specialists – some of them at the most prestigious hospitals in America – and of those, none had ever heard of FQAD and fewer than 10 knew that the fluoroquinolone (FQ) antibiotics could cause permanent damage and disease.

This despite the Food and Drug Administration placing Black Box Warnings — the highest warning a medication can receive before being pulled from the market for being too dangerous — going back at least as far as 2008.

FQAD is recognized as a disability by the FDA, yet every time I see a new doctor and have to list preexisting conditions, I’m met with puzzled looks or, often, disbelief and scorn.

My Story of Medical Neglect

I remember when, early on in my disease, I told a rheumatologist that my illness was a direct result of FQs.

This man, who is a professor at Emory University Medical School, looked me dead in my face and told me that he specifically instructs his students not to believe patients who tell them that they are having bad reactions to a drug they’ve been given.

“Patients don’t know what they’re talking about,” he scoffed. 

This erroneous teaching is dangerous, and potentially even deadly. 

There are many medications and classes of medications that have a recognized potential for causing serious ADRs, including permanent disability or death.

It’s a huge risk, especially for the thousands of patients seeing doctors who may have studied under this man’s tutelage.

People Magazine just ran a story of a young woman who was given a prescription of FQs, which resulted in profound disability. Chat rooms and online support groups are full of us, and the experiences are frustratingly the same: we weren’t warned about the dangers of these drugs, and, when our bodies were destroyed — FQs damage nerves and collagen. Nerves are the control centers of the body. Collagen holds it together. — we’re often told we have some sort of psychological disorder.

That we need to go on antidepressants. 

Or – if-and-when the proper tests come back positive that something is most definitely wrong – doctors will try to blame any and everything other than the drug.

In my case, I was given ciprofloxacin (an FQ) as a just-in-case because I had been traveling and was experiencing some stomach upset. Three harrowing weeks and about a dozen doctors later, and I was completely disabled with small and large fiber neuropathy, central nervous system (brain) damage, and body-wide collagen destruction.

In three weeks I went from healthy 34-year-old woman with a tummy ache to bedridden.

I’ve been disabled ever since. 

Now, at 44, having lived with the fallout of FQs and followed the ongoing research as to how and why they wreak the damage they do on some patients, I have a dossier of research at the ready – research from reputable sources like the National Institutes of Health, etc.

Not that doctors believe me when I present them with this either. 

“Don’t Doctor Google!,” they say, without acknowledging that, prior to becoming sick, I was a journalist and medical research was one of my “beats.”

They also never look at the research articles I send them or have printed out. They don’t know, and they don’t want to know.

Mocked to My Face

I thought this would be different if I went to a research hospital (apparently not Emory), so I made sure I was seen at the prestigious Mayo Clinic.

Where I was likewise mocked. 

To my face. 

By multiple doctors. 

Perhaps one of my worst experiences was with the clinic’s pain management program, which is overseen by the worst “physician” I have ever had the misfortune to meet.

This man, who had a PhD and not an M.D., spent the month telling me and everyone else in the 5-day-a-week, 8-hour-a-day program that we suffered from Central Sensitization Syndrome (basically you really were in actual, physical pain once, but your brain latched onto and amplified that pain, and that’s why you’re feeling pain now – it’s not because a drug literally damaged your mitochondrial DNA, ate away at your nerves and turned your collagen to tissue paper).

Mr. PhD and his staff insisted that weening off meds and instituting physical therapy and lifestyle modifications would have you on your way to a better quality of life in no time. And they ignored any symptoms you presented with while at the camp that would negate this theory (Due to my nerve damage and malfunctioning, I had a fever the entire time I was there, my legs and feet were bright purple from blood pooling there and not reaching my brain, and I nearly fainted on multiple occasions).

Now don’t misunderstand me here: lifestyle modifications and physical exercise, to the degree one is able, are absolutely essential for chronic illness patients. What isn’t essential – and is, indeed, downright detrimental to chronic illness patients – is to be yelled at in front of all the other patients in the program, that there is “Nothing wrong with you!” and that he’s “Sick of you.”

This tantrum was accompanied by him storming out of the room. 

And the rest of the patients in the room apologizing to me for his behavior once he was gone.

He probably hoped I’d drop out of the program after his entirely inappropriate episode, but if there’s anything I am other than sick, it’s stubborn.

So I stuck it out to the very end, and all I have to show for my efforts is crippling healthcare anxiety around not being believed and being publicly yelled at.

Amusingly, Mayo Clinic, now aware that FQAD is real and terrible, reached out to me a couple of years ago. I am now part of a study they are conducting to explore the exact mechanisms of how and why FQs cause the damage they do.

“Central Sensitization” indeed! 

The Problem With Doctors and Big Pharma

One of the root causes of this epidemic of ADRs – and it is an epidemic – is that most doctors are only required to take one pharmacology class in med school. One. (To be fair, some take two.) Additionally, most doctors are, on average, 17 years behind on the medical research.

The result for patients? 

While most doctors know that X medication should be prescribed for Y disease, they are not well-versed enough in the exact mechanisms and peculiarities of the medications they prescribe. And if those medications have had warnings added in the last 17 years? They are unaware.

It also doesn’t help that much of the medical research conducted on medications is paid for by Big Pharma and, until recently, was not done on female patients. For the longest time, studies were only conducted on males as researchers noticed that things like women’s monthly hormone fluctuations affected research outcomes. Not wanting to account for those variables, only male subjects were used.

Don’t Let Doctors Neglect You

If you made it this far, you may be asking: “What’s the point? Do you want me to just not go to my doctor anymore or not take my medicine anymore?”

Obviously the answer to that is “no.” If you have a health issue, you need to see a doctor, and a good doctor is worth his/her weight in gold (which, given today’s gold prices, is really saying something).

What I am saying is that every physical body is different, and you know your body better than anyone else does. So make sure you educate yourself on what medications you’re being given and how they work. Monitor your body for any changes you experience.

At the end of the day, you have to be your own advocate, because, even if you’re lucky enough to have a doctor that doesn’t gaslight you, medical errors are the third leading cause of death in the United States.

Please, do everything you can not to become a statistic. 

Note: This is an opinion article as designated by the the category placement on this website. It is not news coverage. If this disclaimer is funny to you, it isn’t aimed at you — but some of your friends and neighbors honestly have trouble telling the difference.