« food labellings...ahem | Main | more glitazone littering »
May 24, 2007
glitazones ..no glitter are they....
an ischemic heart failure it was, said the doc. yes she had heart disease now, to go with diabetes and blood pressure. and he gave her a list of medications to top the one she was taking for diabetes and blood pressure. new ones came in the form of beta blockers, cholesterol lowering ones to blood thinners like aspirins. i counted 13 pills she took including all the vitamins, iron what not.
and he removed one. one who's importance i just researched. i wish i had seen it earlier. i wish i hadnt seen it now or heard about it. no i am not a doctor. far from it. i dont want to google. i rather not know. i want to trust my doc. i really do. but i cant.
it was pioglitazone which he took off. and she was on it for a year and half. yes, she was on a combination drug therapy with metformin and glimiperide and she took pio as its known here..15mg/day. it was enough....
it was enough to produce fluid retention in her legs.
it was enough to cause edema, she had some in her lungs...
it was enough to cause or 'help' in significant weight gain upwards to 8kg
it was enough prolly to reduce her iron content...
it was enough to cause left ventricle issues
it led to CHF, to the hospital in the first week of april'07, late nite after complaining of chest pains along with hella swollen rock hard legs.
but all that said, it controlled her sugar levels. yippee hooray...you might die but alteast i did my job as pill for that sweet sugar...
i wish i had laid my hands on this report then. yeah, if they had a checkbox for each of the headings in it, i would have prolly ticked most of 'em.
Thiazolidinedione Use, Fluid Retention,and Congestive Heart Failure
A consensus statement from the American Heart Association and American
Diabetes Association
Robert Nesto et.al., Jan 2004
i wish the doc would have told us more. side effects they never discuss with you. relationship he has none with the patient. and they tell you to take your file with you, record they have none. follow-ups , you have to ask...
their chicken scratch on the prescription paper, i cant decipher. strangely the pharmacist does and doles out the strips, no warming labels, no piece of paper that talks anything about it. the strip, i turned upside down, i cant make any of the lettering, i prolly need a magnifying glass or maybe a microscope, expiry date is all i see. yes thats important too..
and where did this latest bout of discovery start?..a recent headline that said a 'brandname' diabetes drug causes significant heart disease. i desperately google for the chemicalname...rosiglitazone it says. hmmm..that sounds familiar. wait, my mom's on something similar sounding...ah..yeah pioglitazone...and the doc's removed that after this latest incident...
she was allright last year, she had no heart condition or any vascular disease. she had her weight under control. yes, she tried various diabetic drug cocktails before pioglitazone was introduced. hey but why was she on this for so long?..couldnt you have called us back for checkpoints? you treated the diabetes, doc, the drug damaged the heart...and then you give something for the heart, it tires up the kidney and then the liver...it never ends.
don't fall sick. or make sure you have a relationship with a doc who is honest and who CARES. that it ain't about the money, that it ain't about your private practice, that it ain't about the commission from the pharma company for pushing the drug..and that it ain't about only diabetes...there are other organs too...
when will the drug companies stop lying?
when will the FDA step up?
when will the hospitals give patients the dignity they deserve?
when will the docs keep up with research?
when will the docs stop treating you as their next cheque?
when will the docs stop asking you to split the pill in half?
is there a doc who CARES....?
is anyone in there?
Posted by dharma at May 24, 2007 06:34 PM