Antibiotics Are Kicking my Butt!
About 10 days ago, I contracted whatever respiratory virus has been going around. It may be in the air – we’ve had a lot of wind and pollen flying around – it may also be from a neighbor who returned from a visit to the Midwest with congestion and a cough. It turned into something pretty severe for her from which she is slowly recovering. For me, it became a severe sinus infection with a sore throat and heavy congestion.
By last Thursday evening, I was losing my voice, which continued to worsen over the next day to the point my husband referred to it as a duck quack. Projecting my voice took too much effort, leaving me breathless. The congestion was so bad that I could barely breathe, let alone sleep at night. I was coughing, fatigued, light-headed, and off balance. We went to a small community hospital where I was diagnosed with sinusitis and prescribed Amoxicillin to take twice a day and 2 tablets of Prednisone to take for inflammation.
The Two Medicines Caused More Side Effects
My body isn’t used to medications any more. I’ve worked so hard to clean out my gut biome, and here I was dropping napalm on the healthy rain forest I had created. Since 2023, when I started this health journey, my body chemistry has changed. Foods and medicines I once tolerated now cause worse symptoms.
Friday was a pretty sleepless night after taking the Prednisone, which caused heavy pressure on my chest making it hard to breathe. So I stopped taking that immediately the next day.
Saturday, I could feel the battle begin within 30 minutes of taking the Amoxicillin. I was already exhausted from lack of sleep, and now I also had muscle weakness and even more fatigue. This persisted all day, despite the probiotics I took an hour later to introduce good warriors to fight the battle raging in my gut. Over the course of the weekend and into Monday, I began to recognize when the side effects would worsen, even as the infection eased.
Sunday, I had another strange sensation of my legs not being connected to my body when I got up from my office chair. They moved when my brain told them to walk, but they didn’t feel connected, as though I didn’t have full control over them. That lasted most of the day and into the evening after taking the second dose of antibiotics.
Tuesday, after speaking with a nurse at the community hospital, I decided to stop the antibiotics despite the fact I’m supposed to take them through Sunday. I seem to be on the mend. My voice has returned about 95%. If I relapse, I’ll go back to the hospital to get re-evaluated and try a different medication.
In the meantime, I’ve also been saying affirmations and mediating to get rid of the infection. This morning before breakfast, I had enough energy to ride the stationary bike for 20 minutes and follow up with 17 minutes of stretches, Pilates, and neck exercises. Hopefully, this will continue and my body will begin to heal.
The scary thing about broad-spectrum antibiotics? Since they basically kill off all germs in your body, good and bad, it can take years before the good bacteria grow back. In some case, they may never return.
That's another reason I'm adding probiotics to offset and, hopefully, help the good bacteria return.