It has been seventeen months since I took three doses of Cipro and seventeen months of endless education of a degree in which I will never receive nor have ever been interested in to begin with. Pushed into an unfamiliar world due to a prescription of an antibiotic for an infection I did not even have.
I have never been one to like medications and because I have always been generally healthy, I have rarely ever needed them. A suspected urinary tract infection is what started this whole mess. As it turned out, it was bladder irritation due to ice tea, not an infection. If I had listened to my gut I would not have swallowed the poison. Instead, I listened to my doctor. Why? Because I had been going to her for quite a long time, she knew me best; she is supposed to have my best interest at heart. In fact, she knew me so well that when she gave me the prescription she told me NOT to look at the side effects because I would choose not to take it. She knew I hated taking medication. It was JUST an antibiotic. That’s what she said and that is what I told myself.
Well Cipro is NOT just an antibiotic for some people. For some people it is poison; it is a game of Russian roulette with all chambers full. I will spare you the details of the thirty plus symptoms it has caused and continues to cause, but know that my life has not been the same since and it never will be. Even if my body recovers, it will never be the same. It can never give me the time back that I have not been able to spend with my children because I was laying in bed icing my hamstrings, or the hikes I have had to avoid because of the muscle loss; the time I have spent researching alternative ways to heal because the medical community has NO clue. Life will be different, from here on out.
I failed to mention the worst side effect of Cipro toxicity – how all of this can consume you, swallow you whole and spit you out in pieces. Fragments. Trying to fix yourself while being sick is not an easy task. It is an unfair task actually. It can make you angry; it can make your friends and your family angry. They don’t want to hear it and you are too tired to listen to yourself anymore.
I became silent.
During my silence an evolution occurred. It has started me on a new journey; a delicate balance of before, after, and mostly today. The object of my new journey is to gather the fragments each day as if they are new and polish them, repaint them and do my best to put them back together again. The object is to make a new art piece, a new me, post Cipro injury and to hope that people will admire the new me, but more importantly, that I will admire the new me, the stronger me, the less naive me. I think will call my art piece “Fragmented Balance”.
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thanks for sharing your experience Bobbie Jo! I m glad you are no longer silent!