Deadly Medicine

When we get older our old bodies need a little help to keep going. Illnesses and body part failures necessitate that doctors prescribe various medications to keep us functioning properly. Currently, I’m taking ten medications in the morning and seven at night to keep me in the healthy range. This is great, but on two occasions two of the medicines prescribed for me came close to ending me. This story documents my experiences.

Deadly Medicine

 

In the spring of 2006, we were fishing at Grand Lake one week end and I my nose started bleeding a little. I didn’t think too much about it since I was on blood thinners, but the next day I started coughing up a little blood and noticed there was blood in my urine and in my stool so my wife called my Doctor in Tulsa, but he hadn’t returned the call yet. My wife drove me to the ER and St Johns in Tulsa. They ran about all the tests for lung cancer, stomach Ulcer, heart problem, internal bleeding and so on. They finally decided that the medication Coumadin (rat poison/ blood thinner) I was taking had made my blood so thin it was oozing out every where. I guess I would have bled to death if I had continued taking it. I stayed off the blood thinners for a while and eventually was prescribed Plavix instead and I’ve had no problems since.

 

In February and March of 2012, I became ill with what I thought was the flu, a bad cold, bronchitis, or the whooping cough. I had been to the Doctor several times and tried all the usually remedies but nothing helped. My sinuses were clogged, I was coughing up tons of mucous almost continuously, my feet, legs and body were swollen up, and I felt miserable. I was coughing so much mucous to keep my lungs clear, my ribs and stomach were extremely sore. I could not sleep lying down in the bed because the mucous would run into my lungs to the point that I couldn’t breath and I would wake up gasping for air and then coughing for a long period of time. I stayed in my big boy recliner twenty four hours a day. I was weak and didn’t feel like eating much and I continued to take my medicine. One night, I became deathly ill with the cold sweats and my heart started pounding badly so Pam hauled to the ER again. I thought it was the big one this time. They did the tests and found out I had extremely low blood sugar because I wasn’t eating and had continued to take my diabetes medicine. I drank some juice and ate some food and the immediate crisis was over. Since I thought I had a heart problem earlier, they had made a follow up appointment with a local heart doctor. I remember going in to see the doctor and barely fitting in the chairs in the waiting room. When I talked to him, I told him the story of my sickness and that I had been very sick for six weeks. He looked at my medications list and told me it was probably the Actos (diabetes supplement) that was making me ill. I stopped taking the Actos immediately and begin to feel better almost the next day. I went back for a follow up visit in a week and all the coughing and congestion was gone, I had lost 27 pounds, i was sleeping in my bed again and I felt much better. I told the doctor he probably saved my life. Since I quit taking Actos, I have felt better that I have in years. This was the most expensive medication I was taking. I was paying $235 dollars a month for 30 Actos pills and the medication was killing me. I really felt like the dumb ass of the year. The picture below was taken a week before I quit taking Actos. I literally felt and looked like the “walking dead”.

 

All you seniors out there remember, if you are very ill and you can’t figure out what’s causing it, check your medications carefully as one of them may be the culprit.

I was paying $225 per month for medicine making me deathly ill.

Thanks for reading Deadly  Medicine,

Hawg Jaw Bill