Did a doctor ever give you a new drug that made you worse when the old drug always worked?

Stepped on a nail, the doctor was trying out Erythromyacin instead of penicillin. I woke up the next morning vomitting continously. No pauses at all. He called it a minor gastric upset.

I have always taken Imitrex for migraines and it works fine. Some time back though, my doctor decided to have me try Maxalt instead, because I complained about the cost of Imitrex. He said Maxalt was less expensive. Unfortunately, while it didn’t make me worse, it didn’t work. Period. I went back to Imitrex.

The good news is Imitrex is now available in a generic, so I can save money and still stop my migraines. Interestingly, I used to sometimes try taking Aleve before I would resort to using one of my precious Imitrex. Now they’ve come out with a migraine medication that combines the main ingredient in Imitrex (sumatriptan) with naproxen sodium (Aleve) for more stubborn migraines. Should I demand a cut of the profits? LOL

Nope. One of the benefits of centralised health care is docs never change brands just cause a rep bought them lunch.

Yes, either made me worse or not worked at all. I hate it when you tell a doctor of a medicine that you already know has worked for you without side effects and then they suggest that the new medicine will probably work better. I use to take aciphex for my acid reflux and then when they gave me another medicine that they said worked better, all it did was give me the runs and intestinal cramping and nausea. Doc try to get me to stay on it another two weeks she said till I got use to it. I told her heck no. I need to not run to the bathroom or feel nauseas at work all day.
She gave in and perscribed the aciphex which I had to go on my day off back to the doctors office to pick up the perscription and not to mention the waste of money on a drug that didn’t work.

Yes, my GP and one of the specialists that I see got together and decided that the working pharmaceutical combination that I had been on wasn’t sufficient and changed a thing or two here and tweaked a thing or two there, next thing I know, I’m an inpatient at the local hospital. The Einsteins pulled their heads out of their butts and adjusted me right back to where I had started and, wonder of wonders, I leveled right back out again. After that I make them tell me exactly why any of my meds need to be changed before they change them, we’re all happier that way! ;~P

I always ask for Penicillin, Amoxicilyn or any of those old ones. New ones (like Lovaquan) can actually make your tendons burst—says so right on the info—and I can’t understand why anyone would do that to themselves.

@linneasophia Levofloxacin (Levaquin) is not new its been around for about 20 years and is generally prescribed to treat life threatening bacterial infections where other antiobiotics (such as penicillin, amoxicilyn) have failled. Yes it does have some serious side effects and should be prescibed with caution, but if it was a choice between dieing and a 0.1% of tendon injury then I’d choose to live and I think you’d find a lot of other people would too.

My husband took Levaquin and thank God the pain in his thigh went away in a week. It woke him up at night! I think he took two.

My husband grew up having to use a Ventolin inhaler. After I married him and we lived far from his hometown, he went to another doctor for a new prescription of the same. This doctor refused to give him Ventolin, and brought up this nonsense story about how Ventolin was too strong for him, and that he had to use Albuterol instead. The thing is, Albuterol and Ventolin are pretty close to the same thing, but because they carry different names, they are slightly different in their make up.

Hubby reluctantly took the Albuterol scrip, but he found out that in spite of the doctor’s claims, the Ventolin actually worked better on him, but he could not find a doctor anywhere who would prescribe Ventolin. This went on for years until he gave up trying to get a scrip for Ventolin.

I think this is a typical example of doctors trying to meet quotas from a drug company.

One’s health and well being is ultimately the responsibility of the individual.

The doctor is there to make informed suggestions, write prescriptions and perform surgeries.

In this Internet age there is no excuse for patients to visit their MD completely uninformed.

Also, nobody knows your body and mind like YOU should.

I’m speaking from the perspective provided by mental illness but experimentation (I prefer the word tuning) is all part of the game.

I tweak nearly everything I own, iPhone, Honda Integra, etc.

My mind is no different at all.

(How can we fix this? how can we make it run better?)