Continuing

The only thing different was that this one was not a beta blocker and it still contained hyrochlorothiazide.  I started it in December 2013.  By January 2014, my arms had broken out in a god-awful mess.  They were oozing blood and pus.  I did not know what was happening.  I called the doctor.  He called in a prescription for steroid cream and said that it was caused by the cold weather.  In Apri, I could stand it no more.  I made and appointment and went in.  The first sentence out of his mouth was, "Oh you really can't take these meds."  He knew that the first time around was caused by these meds and he put me on them again.  Well, I stopped taking them.  He told me to use an anti-itch cream like benadryl.  Wrong again.  It exacerbated the problem.  My arms now looked like raw hamburger.  I went back. Now I needed a dermatologist.  Since I was no longer with Scott and White, I saw a different dermatologist.  He prescribed a spray steroid.  I used the sample on Monday when I saw this dermatologist.  It burned like hell.  I started having trouble breathing almost immediately.  It got worse Monday night.  I used the spray again Tuesday morning.  Then I picked up the prescription.  I read the literature.  It was not supposed to be used on open wounds and my arms were nothing but open wounds.  By Tuesday afternoon, my breathing was much worse and I called the nurse at the dermatologist's office.  She called me back and told me that the doc said to double the dose.  No, this is causing me to have asthma like symptoms.  Well that is what he said and she hung up.  I had not used this steroid since Tuesday morning.  By Wednesday, I was much worse.  I called again.  No return call.  Wednesday night was bad.  Thursday morning was worse.  I called again.  No return call.  By Thursday night, I was in real trouble.  I was in a full on asthma attack and I don't even have asthma.  I was so bloated.  I sat straight up in a chair all night because I was afraid to go to sleep.  At 8am Friday morning, I called my doctor's office.  I got and appointment for 1:30 that afternoon.  At 1pm, the nurse called and told me that the doctor said that I didn't need to come in because he couldn't do anything more for me.

Ok, so I muddled through the attack.  I wrapped my arms in gauze and went to work on Monday morning.  A friend who drives for UPS pushed for me to see his dermatologist.  I balked at first, but then I made and appointment for Thursday.  When I saw him, he told me I had chemical burns on my arms and he was going to treat me as a burn victim.  I spent an entire week in my house out of the sun.  I wrapped my arms twice a day in gauze soaked in a solution, then applied steroid cream.  Even after my arms cleared up, I would still break out in huge hives.  I controlled this with Allegra.  It took me over a year to get over this second assult to my system.  And now I had high blood pressure.  Those meds had given me high blood pressure.  And an extra 15 pounds.  So from April 2014 until March of this year no meds.  I went to a new doctor in February 2015. He did a complete work up.  He used a lab that was under investigation for paying kickbacks to doctors for referrals of people with diabetes and it was also receiving kickbacks from the drug companies for pushing their diabetic treatments.  It showed my cholestrol of 171 and I was now diabetic.  I blew it off after what I had found out about the lab.  Never in any of my physicals had any indication of diabetes surfaced even when I had had the lab work done after drinking a soda.  Now I was staying away from doctors.  But the beginning of this year, I went to see the remaining old school doctor.  He did a physical.  He didn't like my blood pressure and talked me into taking lisinopril.  Erratic blood pressure and racing heart beat, dizziness, feeling of general misery.  So we quite that one.  It did nothing to control the blood pressure.