"Man!" Mark said, reaching down to grab the back of his left ankle. "That really hurts!" He was lying on the couch in the living room, watching an old movie on Netflix. A small table had been pulled over next to the couch. It held a humidifier, a variety of pill bottles and nasal sprays, a box of tissues, and a big glass of water.
"And it's not like I've even been hiking!"
Resigned, he chalked up the unexplained pain to the vagaries of having a human body. He settled back to watch the movie, waiting for the famous line "Badges? We don't need no stinkin' badges!," even though he knew that wasn't exactly how it really went.
The next day, he was sitting on a stool in the kitchen when his whole left arm went numb.
"That's odd," he thought, "I wasn't even lying on it or anything." Thoughtfully, he continued eating his English muffin. Before he was done, he regained feeling in his arm. Again, he mentally shrugged and wrote off the odd experience without thinking much about it.
The following day, he was feeling well enough to go sit at his desk in his home office and start trying to wade through the thousand or so emails that had accumulated in the last three days. Quickly overwhelmed, he decided to switch to the mindless task of clearing a pile of papers off his desk, killing time before a scheduled phone call five minutes away. He found some patient information printouts he'd gotten at the drug store a few days earlier. His doctor had prescribed antibiotics and several other medicines.
Idly, he glanced over the warnings for the first drug and sat up straighter as he read, "The medication may rarely cause tendon damage ... get medical help right away if you develop joint/muscle/tendon pain or swelling." He thought about his odd ankle pain. Further down the page, he was startled to read, "Rarely, this medication may cause serious, possibly permanent, nerve problems (peripheral neuropathy). Stop taking [this drug] and tell your doctor right away if you have any of the following symptoms: pain/numbness/burning/tingling/weakness in your arms, hands, legs, or feet." Was this what had happened to his arm?
The phone rang. He took the call, not completely focused on what the caller was saying. As soon as he could, he got off the phone and called his doctor's office.
"I have not one but two symptoms that they put in the call-your-doctor-right-away bucket in the prescribing information!"
Within minutes, he was given clear marching orders: "Stop taking that antibiotic immediately. We have called in a prescription for a different antibiotic. Take the new one until you run out of it."
What happened here? Mark is a savvy healthcare consumer. He'd read many articles that caution people about side effects of drugs. Why didn't he realize sooner that he had a problem? Three factors slowed him down.
First, he was only going to be taking this drug for a week or so. He always read the warnings before he started on any drug that he was supposed to take for years, like the medicine for his high cholesterol. But how much trouble could a drug cause when he was only taking it for a week? It never occurred to him that he could face "serious, possibly permanent, nerve damage."
Second, none of the side effects seemed related to the original problem. How could ankle pain have anything to do with treatment for a sinus infection?
Third, the ankle pain and arm numbness were noticeable and annoying, but they came and went and were nothing he couldn't handle -- nothing he would normally consider calling his doctor about. Even if he had realized without reading the warnings that these were side effects of the drug, he wouldn't have bothered to ask for medical attention.
What can you do? Read the warnings that come with each prescription. Failing that, if you have new, troublesome symptoms, call your doctor. If you have new, minor symptoms, check the warnings to see if they suggest that these could indicate a serious problem - and if so, call your doctor.
