I have bascially had a flu /cold since I started at the 600 mg dose of rifampin about 3 weeks ago. I have muscle soreness, swollen glands, weakness, ear / sinus/ chest congestion (bronchitis), sore throat and overall terrible feeling. It does not seem like a herx because people around me have had the flu / cold. But their's goes away. It seems like I keep getting rexposed to the flu/cold and getting it over and over again.
It seems rifampin is wiping down my white blood cell count making me susceptible to illnesses. I know this is a possible side effect.
I wrote to my doc and until I hear back from her am cutting the dosage back to 300.
I am just wondering if anybody else has experienced this? Or any ideas...
I do not have bloodwork from last week because my nurse couldn't seem to figure out the butterfly thing. So I do not know what my WBC count is.
Thanks!
[ 19. May 2007, 10:28 AM: Message edited by: luvdogs ]
Posted by mtnwoman (Member # 8385) on :
I'm on my second week of rifabutin 150mg bid, a cleaner rifampin, and Septra DS.
This week my eyes are aching like the flu, and sl sense of sore throat too. Who knows!
Posted by luvdogs (Member # 9507) on :
That is sort of how mine started, but I was very weak and achey also. That would come and go for me on the 300 mgs. but then became full force at the 600 mgs. I have had a flu since I started pretty much.
I hope it doesn't happen to you. I felt like I was making progress on the rifampin so I am sort of bummed.
I decided to stop taking it today based on rereading an email from my doc where she said to stop the rifampin if the flu-like feelings continued or got worse. I am wondering if it is like when the rocephin wiped out my WBCs.
I feel bummed and hate having to stop.
Posted by lymeout (Member # 8045) on :
My daughter seems to be having a re-mergence of all her symptoms since starting rifampin. Sweats, swelling, arthritic pain, fatigue and scabbing on scalp followed by hair falling out in clumps. Don't know if this is caused directly by the rifampin itself or by die-off of bacteria. She has not had the breathing problem but never did have that. She has had some chest pain.
The one symptom that seems to have gone away is the oval rash that has been popping up in the bend of her elbow for months now. It has not reappeared since starting rifampin. It was the last symptom to appear.
Can anyone make sense of this drug? Can anyone predict when symptoms will start to abate?
Posted by Health (Member # 6034) on :
I am on my 8th day of the Rifampin, and have not noticed anything except I feel SICK.
Run down, like my immune is low.
I know when I first started babesia treatment, I noticed something in ONE day. By the end of the week I knew that this babesia combo
was going to help me.
I am not having this with Rifampin for a Possible Bartonella.
I think the dosage may be too strong, but even when the dosage was too strong on other combos, I still felt BETTER in a small way even,
not on the Rifampin, but I am still going to keep going.
I may stop it for a couple days to see how I do or I may just keep at it, I had the blood work done, yesterday so will see if things check
out ok. Yesterday I thought I was going to die, explode from the Rifampin, it was really scary, I thought my liver was over taxed, it is so tough to know what is what.
I was and today off and on am having some pains in the liver area, I will see what the liver and blood tests day next week or the next week. Gets you scared.
I have a mouth sore in the back, and just sooo run down. I felt like this when I took
the Dexamethasone for a suppression test, it was a low amount, but it did lower my immune enough for me to feel it.