Connecting The Dots

I have been asked a lot, since I have such a drawn out reaction, how did you connect the dots and determine that this was the result of fluoroquinolone toxicity? Well, I have always been somewhat of a troubleshooter my entire life, having worked with computers and electronics. Also, I have always been a curious person who educates himself if I do not know the answer. So naturally, when something started going wrong with my health I started researching my symptoms.

I am not a doctor, nor do I have any desire to be one. But if you are a fluoroquinolone victim you are almost required to become a doctor, if not forced to do so, to manage your own health. After all, most of us are in this predicament because we trusted a medical professional with a treatment option that was not safe for our bodies. Remember the old saying “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me”? Well since our floxing, I doubt there are many of us out there that will blindly trust a doctor’s opinion, test recommendation, or medication without carefully researching all the pros and cons. You become a skeptical inquirer, a detective, a Sherlock Holmes if you will.

It is a paradoxical irony that we then must turn back to the same system that hurt us to attempt to troubleshoot our problem. Good medical practice requires us, however, to rule out any other possible cause of our symptoms so that we do not jump to conclusions. Every time you research an opinion, test, or medication you gain knowledge – invaluable knowledge, specialized knowledge. And where do you go for this knowledge? Well, obviously the first answer is the internet. After all you are reading this blog aren’t you? On the internet, I can find up-to-date professional quality information on any testing procedure, medication, disease, or syndrome. That’s the wonder of the internet, the amount of raw data available.

I remember once telling a doctor that I literally had to find the answer for what I have on the Internet. His reply to me was, “you can’t trust everything you read on the internet.” This is true, assuming that I am a total idiot and do not have the capacity to skeptically filter out fact from fiction. After all, that doctor did not have the answer to what was happening to me, even though the data was there. Factual, reputable, knowledge about my condition was there in black and white.

That brings me back to us becoming the doctors. There is a total failure in our medical establishment today. The failure is that people like me, and there are thousands, damaged by a commonly prescribed drug, have nowhere to turn for treatment. So we turn to each other and share our knowledge about tests, medications, and opinions. And in the end we are left to be the doctors because the very doctors who prescribe the medication do not know its horrible capacity for maiming and do not know how to treat you once it has happened.

For some floxies, the answer is obvious as to what caused their problems. An immediate acute response while on the medication leaves little room for error. But others search for a while before the dots all connect up. I have seen quite a few come onto internet forums years later when something connected the dots. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle once said “Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.” So basically, if there was fluoroquinolone usage in your past, and you have eliminated every other cause, you have your answer.