Cipro - HELP!!!

[The_Cheese_Man]

Hi

I have what I believe might be a serious problem here. About 4 days ago, my prostatitis came back again after almost a year with no problems. The last time it flared up my doctor gave me a prescription for Cipro and after taking it for a month, the prostatitis went away. While I did have a few stops and starts while on Cipro the last time around and it IS some pretty powerful stuff that a lot of people can't take, I stayed on it because I was determined to get rid of my prostatitis symptoms which had spread to my testicles and was totally wreaking havok.

Well, I just happened to have an extra one-month supply and so I began taking the Cipro again (I'm on day 4 now - 500mg x 2 day) and lately I have been aching and having sharp pains all over my body. My legs are very sore and itchy and I have pelvic and joint pain. I also have some sores in my mouth and my arms hurt. This evening my left chest area and shoulder hurt so bad that I though I was either having a horrible gas pocket pain or a heart attack. It still hurts. If I were to describe my general feeling, I would say that it feels like I am a 90 year old man with cancer all through him. Also, my face and neck area are somewhat sore, I have loose stools in the morning and I basically just don't feel all that good.

Now I'm no Cipro expert but I am curious to know if anyone else here has felt this way while on Cipro and would appreciate any information you could kindly provide. The thing is, if I go off of the Cipro, I'm right back to square one again with the prostatitis and I have to get rid of this thing. Should I just continue taking it and hope for the best since I lived through it the last time?. Also, I would be VERY interested to know if there is anything else I can use instead of Cipro (including herbal/natural remedies, etc). I must admit that I am very skeptical when it comes to advice like "take 3 ground lizard tails with shot of brandy and sleep standing on your head", etc but if there are any REAL natural cures, I am totally all ears. Thank you so much.

[bassie]

Hi Cheese_Man
Just checking if the medication was out of date. I looked up Ciprofloxacin.
Is that the full name of the drug?
If it is it certainly has more than usual warnings attached. Many side effects possible as well as warnings about storing it and not using old stuff.

Your symtoms are too many and varied to make a judgement on here and it really sounds like you should re-check with your dr. Sorry I cannot be of much help.

[Susannah]

Cheese,

I would say QUIT immediately. Pain all over like you are describing is one of the side effects of Cipro, and unfortunately, it doesn't always go away once you discontinue the medicine. That's part of the reason that doctors are so against people taking it w/o being under a doctor's care (remember when anthrax was being mailed out, and they were adamant about NOT going to Mexico to pick up some anthrax?). Anyway, there are some alternatives to it, you might want to ask the doctor to take a sample of where you are infected and do a culture and sensitivity test of it (the sensitivity test tests which antibiotics kill the germ). Natural things that *might* help are grapefruit seed extract and garlic (the Vitamin Shoppe has a kind called Allicin 6000 that's really strong). The natural remedies aren't going to be as fast acting.

You might also want to ask your doctor about taking some cholestyramine. It's a drug that is used to treat high cholesterol by binding to the bile acid in your digestive tract, so that your body has to break down cholesterol in order to have the proper substances to digest the food (or something like that). Anyway, it's been shown to be effective in helping to clear toxins out the body fairly quickly by binding to them, and might be of some help to you if the all-over pain doesn't go away with discontinuation of the drug. It's very safe, since it really doesn't even get absorbed, just binds to stuff as it goes through the digestive tract.

Hope some of this helps!