I’m still fuming

The other day I read a case study about a woman who was being treated for ulcerative colitis. She was prescribed sulfasalazine (a combination of a sulfa drug and aspirin). She got desperately ill: very high fever and rash, so she went to the hospital and was put into intensive care. They did blood work and whatnot and discovered that she had bone marrow suppression, meaning a decrease in production of red and white blood cells. They were pretty sure she had leukemia, but it turned out she was allergic to sulfasalazine.

The reason I’m still fuming is that a couple of years ago my husband was being treated for colitis (not the ulcerative kind) and was prescribed a drug called budesonide (he didn’t think sulfasalazine was working). A few days after taking the drug, his extremities became painful and very weak. He could hardly move. He didn’t stop taking the drug until he could get ahold of the doc, who said to stop it, but didn’t say it was causing his symptoms. To try to figure out what was causing his symptoms he went to his GP, his gastroenterologist, a neurologist, and a rheumatologist. They all had different theories. He had a colonoscopy plus a muscle biopsy. The results showed nothing.

All along I’d been saying his symptoms were caused by the budesonide. But no one paid any attention to me, of course. (Although when I spouted my theory to the neurosurgeon who did the biopsy, she said, “It’s the reason I don’t take pills” and walked off.)  I even found an FDA-related “adverse effects” web site in which people reported the same effects from budesonide as my husband’s. I recommend that you look at it.

It took my husband about a year to recover. By the way, he takes sulfasalazine to control his colitis and I’m still fuming.

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