Oak Harbor, OHPatients who have suffered from Levaquin side effects know the extreme pain that can be caused by a reaction to the Levaquin antibiotic. These side effects include tendon ruptures and tendonitis, both extremely painful conditions. Unfortunately, patients do not realize that they will have a reaction to Levaquin medicine until it is already too late.
"I don't want this to happen to anybody else," Celeste says. "I'm on pain medication and it's been awful. I'm pretty limited right now to what I can do. It's a sad situation.
"I had an infection—pelvic inflammatory disease—and I went to the doctor. He gave me a prescription for Levaquin. Around 10 or 11 days later, I was out cutting and stacking a small tree for firewood. We do this a lot, so I'm used to it, although I had not been out in a while to cut and stack firewood. There was about a half a truckload of wood that we stacked.
"The next day, there wasn't a part of my body that didn't hurt. I was in severe pain and I could not walk. I got out of bed to take my medicine and went right back to bed. My feet and my hands were swollen and I stayed in bed for 2 days because I hurt so much.
"The antibiotic seemed to be working and my energy finally came back. About 3 days after I stopped taking Levaquin, I wanted to try out a new vacuum that was brought home. It was lighter than the one I was used to, so I vacuumed a small room to see how well the vacuum worked.
"When I woke up the next day, I thought my shoulder was dislocated or broken, I was in so much pain. It was as much pain as I was in when I had back surgery. I couldn't sleep because of the pain. My one shoulder feels dislocated and I have pain in both shoulders. Then, I heard about Levaquin and problems with tendons and I decided to read more about it.
"The doctor is doing an MRI on Friday to try to find out what is going on. I have severe neuropathy—I have to keep a pain diary and even that little amount of writing makes my hand go numb. I'm in pain; I have to keep switching hands on the phone. I can do some things, but not a lot of things.
"I'm on medication for a blood disease, which has caused me to suffer for a long time. Now I get this [shoulder problem] and it overrides the other pain that I'm taking the medication for.
"I've tried sleeping in bed, but I wake up every hour on the hour. I'm not sleeping properly. I couldn't handle even a sheet on me—it felt like a lead blanket. I'm in pain as we speak. Doing dishes or sweeping hurts. I tried to take care of a bag of leaves yesterday but I'm in severe pain and there's nothing I can do about it. The thing is that my hands are swollen but if I don't use them, that doesn't go away. I've even tripled my pain medication, but if my doctor finds out he won't refill my prescription.
"I've been in all kinds of pain. This really upsets me, because if there are others feeling the way I do—I just want people to know that it's not good for them."