My  name is Catherine, and I appreciate you visiting my page to read about my nightmare with using Cymbalta and how this non-narcotic FDA approved drug destroyed my life and my family over the past 21 months and counting.

A LITTLE BACKGROUND ON ME

Just a little about me so that you can put my story into perspective a bit more.  I am a 38 years old female living in Arizona, a single parent of a 17 year old daughter.  I had a career in Financial Business Management with one of the top financial institutions in the country and internationally.  I was employed with this company for the past eight plus years as a Senior Site Administrator and Assistant to the VP of Home Finance / Default Servicing in Phoenix.  I worked 60 hours a week or more, always bringing work home to continue working nights and weekends if necessary.  I was extremely dedicated to my career and to the betterment of my company and department, taking great pride in my work and outstanding performance.  I had attended ASU and University of Phoenix for Business Management and was looking forward to continuing my education further in the near future.

INTRO TO CYMBALTA

I started taking Cymbalta in April of 2006 for anxiety/stress.  I had also been taking Wellbutrin for depression for years, which worked well – but the stress from work and raising a teenager was bringing my anxiety and stress level a little high, and my Doctor felt that Cymbalta would help.

April 2006 – Started taking Cymbalta at 30 mg for anxiety/stress

May 2006 – Increased Cymbalta to 60 mg

July 2006 – Increased Cymbalta to 120 mg

I will say that Cymbalta was instrumental in helping alleviate some of the anxiety I was experiencing.  I felt it was helping enough to continue taking the medication, and didn’t see many negative side effects that were severe enough to discontinue the medication.  At least none that I associated with the drug at the time.

SYMTOMS BEGIN - APRIL 2006

Shortly thereafter I started experiencing ‘episodes’ when walking where I would get head ‘whooshes’ and I felt like I was stalling at the same time.  It would last a second, and I would choke or gasp for air coming out of it, and start to fall over.  The feeling in my head was similar to how your stomach would feel on a roller coaster going down really fast.  I would get dizzy, lose balance, and be completely confused for a few seconds.  This happened once a week or so and concerned me, but not that much.  I passed it off as possibly being high blood sugar, however after a few of these episodes I started taking my blood sugar levels when they would occur and I could not find a correlation.

I see my Doctor in Florence, Arizona at least once a month – to monitor my blood sugar level and my depression symptoms.  He is in my opinion one of the best doctors, if not the best doctor, I have ever encountered – and I have met a lot of really bad ones that are either ignorant, don’t listen or just don’t care.  On one of my visits my doctor noted that my blood pressure seemed to be raised quite a bit, and wanted me to start medication to help lower it.  I mentally decided that the head ‘whooshes’ must be related to the high blood pressure I suddenly started having.  They were still fairly infrequent, so I didn’t think too much about them at the time, other than wondering what was causing them.

In August of 2006 I started having problems with severe acid reflux that I never had before, and other gastrointestinal problems.  I felt like hell all the time, and was gaining weight fast – something I have struggled with my entire life.  I was told Cymbalta was a weight neutral drug though, one of the reasons it was chosen for my anxiety/stress.  I started taking something for my acid reflux at this time.  I also was having chest pains and palpitations, which I thought maybe was from the acid reflux.  At times my heart felt as though it was beating so fast and hard  I thought I was going to have a heart attack, and the chest pains felt like hot skewers piercing through my heart.  I felt like I was dying.  My Doctor sent me to a cardiologist, where I had numerous tests performed, including an echocardiogram, electrocardiogram, and nuclear myocardial perfusion scanning.  Thankfully all of the tests came back without anything being wrong, and the cardiologist put me on medication to control my newly elevated blood pressure levels.  My regular Doctor gave me nitroglycerin to stop the chest pains that seemed to also come along with severe anxiety.  It seemed to be blamed on anxiety and stress.  I was also starting to have problems with being exhausted all of the time, pain in my joints, muscles and bones, and no matter what I couldn’t stop sweating or feel cool.

THE BEGINNING OF HELL

In November 2006 things took a severe turn for the worst, and my living nightmare started full force.  I started  having problems with a severe anxiety feeling inside – a restless, shaky, agitated, creepy-crawly feeling, along with ‘electric zaps’ in my head.  The zaps were very similar to the head whooshes, but with an added electric shock that would shoot into my head and sometimes from the head down into the body.  I would fall over if standing, start choking as I tried to breathe again – as though my whole body stopped and was restarted.  I would become confused, disoriented, dizzy, nauseous, and my head would throb.  This feeling would hit over and over again several times a minute.  It got worse with body movement, eye movement, being startled, hearing loud noises, flashing lights, etc.  I thought I was going to go insane between the zaps and the anxiety feeling inside my body.  I started itching all over my body – a burning, tingling itching that could not be alleviated by creams or allergy meds, and developed severe tinnitus – a loud ringing or buzzing  in my ears – primarily my left ear.  This was accompanied by jaw pain and stiffness.  I would wake up every morning with my teeth clenched unable to open my jaw, with such pain accompanying it.  I was having ‘hot flashes’ and felt as though my entire body was on fire all the time.  My doctor reduced my dose of Cymbalta back down to 60mg, thinking perhaps this was being caused by too much Cymbalta in my system.  I now know this was incorrect – the hungry Cymbalta Beast wanted more and more.  Reducing the dosage added to the symptoms.  At this time my doctor also prescribed me Requip, typically a Parkinsons or RLS drug.  The Requip was effective in slowing down the intolerable feelings inside my body, the itching, the shakiness and trembling feeling, the electric zaps, etc.  They were still present, but it did seem to slow it down and make the electric shocks hit at a lower wattage.

There were still days of extreme zapping activity, sometimes correlated to my own activity.  I was beginning to have problems with confusion, memory loss, extreme sleepiness, even more exhaustion, and more.  I was becoming irritable with everyone around me, and trying to stay as normal as possible.  How normal can someone be with electric zaps hitting their head non-stop and the feeling that you cant move more than a few feet without wanting to pass out?  I was taking naps in my car during work breaks, and having to work even more at home to keep up with my workload because I couldn’t get anything done in this condition.  My Doctor sent me to a Neurologist, and believed that the zaps were possible seizure activity.  This scared me tremendously.  I was anxious to find out what was wrong and  to make this feeling go away.  My personal life was suffering, and my professional life was suffering even more.  I was missing too much time off work, and when I was there I was not overly effective – which was a personal stab to my pride in my work and performance.  My family was starting to not want to be around me due to my irritability, and my friends didn’t understand.

NEUROLOGIST #1

In February 2007 I went to a General Neurologist in Mesa, Arizona.  He did a lot of little neurological tests and asked a million questions.  He then referred me to Barrow’s Neurological Institute .  He indicated that I simply had too much going on with me, and he wasn’t sure if he could help me.  I was crushed that he didn’t know what was wrong, or even have enough of an idea to start helping me.  On the other hand, Barrow’s Neurological Institute at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Phoenix is an internationally renowned  medical center with the world’s leading neurologists, focusing on excellence in patient care, medical education and research – and I was thrilled to be going there for diagnosis and treatment.  I was hopeful and positive that finally the end would come to these electric zaps and other horrifically nasty symptoms that had been haunting me for so long and destroying my life.  Disappointingly the earliest they could get me in to see a doctor wasn’t for over a month….so I waited patiently while suffering inside.

MY WORLD TURNED UPSIDE DOWN

In February 2007 my life shattered even further.  I went on a business trip with my Manager and several other members of Management for a week.  I accidentally forgot to take my prescription for Requip which I just had refilled the day before I left.  Requip was the only thing keeping the electric zaps to a minimum and made life a little more bearable.  Within a day I started having the most severe shocks to my head I had experienced yet, and I started having a tremor and twitching on the right side of my body.  My memory was shot to hell and all I wanted to do was sleep.  I developed a migraine that lasted for days and I was so disoriented I felt like just dying.  I managed to get some Requip called into a drug store in Columbus, where I was on business, but it took a couple of days for my system to return to a tolerable level.  My function on this business trip was instrumental, and  I was a complete disaster and disappointment.  I became suicidal while I was there – I was devastated at my performance and lack of ability.  I was distraught over my own personal feelings of worthlessness and ashamed to be there.  I let my department down, and I looked like a trembling, twitching, irrational fool. I just wanted to crawl away and die.  If I couldn’t handle my job, a place where I was needed and appreciated for my accomplishments, what good was I?   A week later I encountered even more problems with migraines and sleepiness.  It seems that after heavy periods of head zapping my body just shuts down to recuperate and my head pain is too severe to function at all.  I missed several more days of work, and when I came back I was even less functional than before.  I was constantly late to work, late with projects, sleeping at work, etc.

FORCED OUT OF WORK

In late February my Manager called me into his office and told me that if I didn’t take a Leave of Absence from work until my health and memory returned, he would have to place me on Corrective Action and eventually terminate my employment.   Talk about devastation and humiliation.  Although I know it was justified based on my lacking performance and attendance issues, I was crushed and embarrassed.  The fact that he was condescending and threatening my job didn’t help much.  I have never been on Corrective Action in my life.  I have always been an outstanding performer and take great pride in my abilities and accomplishments.  His demeanor brought me to tears and the next day I cleaned out my office and filed for LOA/FMLA.  My Manager has called me once since then, to ask where my keys were.  You give a person 200% of yourself everyday for years and they want to know where your keys are.  I’ve learned in business there is no loyalty or compassion – once you can no longer do every little thing for someone to make them look good and act like their personal slave day and night you are tossed aside like trash.  Disappointing, and thought of it today – almost a year later – still makes me sick to my stomach and brings me to tears.

BARROWS AND MORE TESTS

From this point on the symptoms remained and it’s a series of doctors and tests.  I started seeing a top Neurologist at Barrows.  They ordered tests, which my insurance (Cigna) declined most of.  Its like jumping through hoops to get anything approved, and everything becomes a waiting game.  Meanwhile I sit around, sleeping most of the time, in pain with electric shocks in my head and a plethora of other symptoms.  Time means nothing to insurance companies – they just care about the money and screwing over their patients.  They should realize that having tests completed sooner than later will cut down on eventual costs of treatments.  You can't delay the inevitable, and in the meantime the condition worsens. Barrow’s doesn’t request things that they don’t feel are necessary.  My Neurologist was wonderful and worked hard to get things approved.  I don’t have a bad thing to say about Barrow’s, they are an awesome facility with excellent doctors – they are merely limited by insurance and testing approvals.

I finally was able to have an MRI on my brain which came back normal.  I also had an EEG on my brain, which also came back normal.  Its hard to catch any seizure activity in a 20 minute period during an EEG.  My Neurologist had requested an inpatient EEG with video monitoring at St. Joseph’s Epileptic Monitoring Unit, but Cigna declined this repeatedly.  I was given anti-seizure medication, which did not help.  I was given meds for the constant headaches, but they did not help much.  I was sent for several sleep studies to try to determine the cause for the excessive sleepiness.  Nothing conclusive could be found.

In July I ended up seeing a Gastroenterologist for the stomach pains I was having and the other intestinal issues such as vomiting, irregular bowel movements, pain, etc.  I had an abdominal CAT Scan, then a Colonoscopy/Endoscopy.  They simply determined I had Irritable Bowel Syndrome since they couldn’t find anything wrong.

BECOMING MORE FRUSTRATED

More than anything I just wanted to know what was causing the electric shocks and get them to STOP!

At this point things seemed to be going at a standstill.  My employer was denying my medical claims, and my FMLA time had run out.  I appealed my medical leave denial and was approved -  finally a paycheck.  Money was tight.  Human Resources informed me that my back pay paycheck would be ‘minus my benefits premium’ – so I did not send in a check that month for my benefits.  They were inaccurate in their statement and due to non-payment I lost all benefits coverage and didn’t qualify for COBRA.  I was devastated.  I needed my meds to survive, and I needed to keep seeing my doctors to get treatment and find the cause of the problem.  This was more stress I certainly didn’t need.  I spent the only time I was awake and not having electric shocks fighting my employer for my benefits coverage, and to keep my job.  This went on and on for months.  I ended up spending most of my time in Lakeside, Arizona because it was cooler than being the Phoenix area and I couldn’t handle the heat. My body constantly felt as though it was on fire. With my memory loss I couldn’t be trusted to remember when I took my meds and my head got worse when the meds were late. Sadly my mother had to keep track of my meds to ensure I was taking them on time and every day.  I relied on the Requip to keep down the head zaps, and I was practically a slave to them, even though they didn’t stop the problem completely.  The memory loss, confusion, tiredness, exhaustion and pain was there no matter what.  I felt useless.  I felt like I was fighting a losing battle.

My family didn’t understand.  After you’ve been sick so long, people are tired of hearing it.  People get frustrated with you not remembering anything.  I was frustrated with myself.  My friends would keep asking if I was better yet, and I had to keep saying no.  Did the doctors find anything yet?  No.  When are you coming back to work?  I don’t know.   I couldn’t talk to my friends that didn’t know about my illness because I had no excuse for not remembering who they are in the middle of my conversations or forgetting what we were talking about.  I couldn’t remember people’s names and I literally felt like I was losing my mind. No one understood.  My doctors started thinking maybe it was just stress, and I honestly think they thought I might just be nuts.  Nothing was showing up on tests, yet I still had symptoms.

Things were getting more and more strained with my daughter and me.  At 16-17 she needed a mother, not a patient to take care of.  I couldn’t remember anything going on with her, couldn’t take care of her, and was failing as a parent.  In July 2007 my daughter moved in with my sister, who had just moved to the Phoenix Metro area.  I couldn’t believe my life was falling apart as much as it was.  My employer continued to deny my claims for Medical Leave, and I continued to fight them.  I was informed that even if remained employed I would no longer be able to return to my previous job, which was fine with me considering the treatment I received from my Manager.   I was not receiving any pay, and was still without benefits.  Thank God for my Primary doctor, who gave me sample medications for everything I needed, and continued to run tests for all possible causes.   I was still going to Barrows monthly as well.  I figured either I would go bankrupt or I would eventually have my benefits reinstated, but I was not going to  stop seeing the doctors or trying to put an end to the pain and misery. I moved permanently to Lakeside due to the cool temperature, and stress free environment.  I couldn’t afford the mortgage on my house in Mesa and needed to get it up for sale before I became delinquent or worse, foreclosed on.

NOVEMBER 2007

In November 2007, a year since the serious symptoms and head flashes began to incapacitate me, I finally got a little light at the end of the tunnel.  My medical benefits were reinstated by my employer – retro back to when they canceled them – and Cigna finally approved the inpatient Epileptic Monitoring Unit stay, scheduled for a week  just before Christmas.  It was either Christmas, or I was on a waiting list until March 2008.  I ruined my family’s Christmas and heard a lot of groaning about it, but it was worth it in my opinion to get into the hospital.

TERMINATION OF EMPLOYMENT

Unfortunately there was a train in the tunnel as well.  My employer officially fired me….twice.  Both times over voice mail.  Justification was that there was no medical evidence to support a medical leave.  That’s a whole other story though.  Still fighting.  Not going to stop fighting.  I haven’t been paid since June 2007, and the payment for my COBRA benefits that I now have is over $850 a month.  My house hasn’t sold, bad market time to sell.  I can’t work with this condition since I have no memory and my head flashes are unbelievable.

EPILEPTIC MONITORING

Move forward to December 17th 2007.  I am entering St. Joseph’s Hospital for a week long Epileptic Monitoring.  I am video monitored and hooked up to 27 electrodes on my head the entire time.  I have to be strapped into the bed and cant even use the bathroom without a nurse present.  I cant shower for a week and am barely able to get my clothes changed since I am hooked up to monitors.  During the stay the goal of my doctor was to take me off the Requip, which has been semi alleviating the symptoms and head zaps and see what happens inside my head.  I entered the hospital with a slight zapping…more the pressure of the zap without the electrical charge that accompanies it.  I went off the Requip and the nurses gave me my other meds each day.  With each day I seemed to get better, not worse.  I was horrified.  I was disappointed.  I was more than confused.

I remember just before I went into the hospital being very excited.  This was IT.  This is when they would find out what was wrong and make it stop for good.  This would show everyone I wasn’t crazy.  This is real, the zaps are real.  The pain is real.  I am not nuts.  I was very thrilled and optimistic.  The night before checking in to the hospital I had dinner with my good friend Christine, the only friend that didn’t abandon me  and didn’t let me push her away when I wanted the world to just leave me alone.  Christine said something at dinner that just shocked me and upset me.  She told me that if the doctors didn’t find anything wrong with me to not give up hope, that God had a plan for me and that things would still be ok.  I never thought that the doctors wouldn’t find something wrong with me. They had to, it was real, and they had to find it.  They had to see the electric shocks, and I thought this would be a magical time  where they would know instantly what was wrong and get to the bottom of things.  I expected to go home ‘cured’ for Christmas.  I was obviously living in a fantasy world, but Christine's words about not giving up hope were helpful as days went on in the hospital.

CONFUSED!

With each passing day at the Hospital I felt the pit in my stomach getting bigger.  The agonizing pain of not having the electrical flashes or zaps and the feeling that the doctors must think I am a liar or a hypochondriac or just plain crazy.  I made it clear to them when I started at the hospital that I couldn’t live like this anymore.  The head shocks were too much to deal with and not knowing if they would ever stop was not an option.  I would end my life if they couldn’t find out what was causing them or how to stop them.  Now I just looked like a fool.  I was off the Requip which had previously kept the effects tolerable, and I had no signs at all.  I had no idea what was going on.  I started trying to determine what was different at the hospital from being at home.  I had changed homes and environments and they persisted.  I moved to a beautiful stress free location, my daughter was being taken care of, and my life was perfect other than this illness and my career being demolished..  More confusion topped with feeling like a fool that people thought was crazy.  Even I started to think I was crazy.

Unknown to me at the time – the hospital was giving me 120 mg of Cymbalta instead of the 60mg dose I had been on for a year.  I am not sure how they derived at this dosage, but I was unaware it was the incorrect amount I was taking.  Simply explained – THEY FED THE BEAST!!!  The Cymbalta Beast was in his glory getting more and more of what it wanted.  The withdrawal effects diminished almost completely due to the added dose. But I didn’t know this yet.  I checked out of the hospital two days before Christmas feeling confused, but happy the zaps were gone.  Maybe it was a miracle cure?  NO!!!

BACK HOME FOR CHRISTMAS

When I got home I continued on my normal 60mg dose of Cymbalta and my other meds.  Within 24 hours the electric shocks showed up again.  I was mortified.  I was defeated.  Words cant describe how I felt inside.  This was it, they weren't gone and when I needed them to appear they didn’t.  There was no hope left. No one could help me.  I couldn’t even get them to happen in the hospital, so how could anyone believe me or help me.  It was now Christmas day.  I felt like hell.  Death warmed over.  The electric shocks were draining me physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually.  I was at the end of my line.  The light in the tunnel was now a train coming to run me down, and I wanted it to just kill me.  I spent days crying and being irritable as well as irrational.  I couldn’t get a grip on my emotions.  I fought the battle so long and it didn’t matter, I was defeated.  I didn’t care what happened to me.  I stopped taking all of my meds completely, ate everything in sight, and wanted to sleep forever.  Each day got more and more intolerable.  The electric shocks went to an all time high, the ringing in my head and headaches were so severe I thought for sure it would kill me.  I was half asleep at all times, was throwing up non-stop, had problems with embarrassing incontinence I didn’t even feel until I was wet, my joints and muscles hurt beyond my wildest nightmares, and the confusion and memory loss was the icing on the cake.  My entire body and mind were falling apart before me and I almost didn’t care – I wanted it to kill me once and for all.   I made the determination that I would make it through the Holidays and that if the symptoms didn’t take my life first, I was checking out for good on January 1st.  The start of a new year seemed like a reasonable time to put an end to this hell and begin a new life on the other side.  I just couldn’t handle this anymore, and with no hope in sight, what did I have to live for anymore?  Nothing.  My life was meaningless.

Let me interject to say that NO ONE should ever have to live like this EVER.  The illness is bad enough, but the not knowing and thinking you are crazy, and wanting to die is even worse.  No drug should ever cause this.  The effects should be more publically known to patients and doctors.  This is simply outrageous.  Where the hell is the FDA on this????

FINALLY AN ANSWER

After five days of intolerable indescribable pain and problems, I couldn’t take it anymore.  I am not sure what my mindset was, but I started adding back in the meds I wasn’t taking, one day at a time.  I put back my Blood Sugar regulator with no change either way.  I added back in  Blood Pressure – no change either way.  The morning of New Years Eve I fed the Cymbalta Beast.  After almost a week of horrific electric shocks, within an hour or two they stopped. Wow.  It was the first time I ever made the connection.  I expect drugs to have side effects from taking them, not from a withdrawal. So I began my search online.  If you Google “Cymbalta” and “zaps” you get over 50,000 hits.  I spent about 12 hours just reading article after article, blog after blog of people describing what I had been feeling for over a year.  The first website I came to that really changed my world was, "http://www.whatwinnersdo.com/severe-cymbalta-withdrawal-symptoms/".   This website changed my life.  After over a year of pain and misery - I wasn't alone.

I was ecstatic, thrilled, happy beyond belief.  After all this time I wasn’t crazy.  I wasn’t making this up.  It was real.  Very real.  People just like me experienced the same effects.  The more I read the more my emotions changed though.  How could a drug company knowingly put this on the market?  How could the FDA allow it?   Why didn’t my doctors know about this?

CYMBALTA - THE BEAST

Knowledge is power.  I started researching as much as I could.  I monitored my symptoms hour by hour.  I kept a detailed journal (as I had through most of this ordeal).  One of the reasons Cymbalta causes withdrawal is that it has a very short half life – the Cymbalta Beast gets hungry more than usual, and in some cases the more you feed it the more it wants.  I determined that my half life for Cymbalta was 9-10 hours; meaning that every 18-20 hours my body wants more.  So before the next dose even arrives my body goes into withdrawal.  After a while, the standard dose isn’t even satiating the Beast anymore, it wants more, and screams to be fed through nasty symptoms and head zaps.  So now I had new found knowledge and power.  I knew what was happening inside me – SSRI/SNRI Withdrawal Syndrome from the Cymbalta, and I knew I could defeat it.  More intolerable hell though, but a new light at the end of the tunnel, and most importantly – I wasn’t crazy.  I am a fighter and I was excited to work on a schedule to get my life back on track.

DOCTOR REACTION AND TAPERING

Armed with my new information I visited both doctors the first week in January.  They were surprised.  They didn’t realize this existed or happened with Cymbalta.  I felt triumphant  - almost high from the excitement that I could make this go away.   I didn’t care what it took to get this to stop, I have already been living in a nightmare the past 21 months.  My Doctor and I worked out a tapering schedule.  My doctor actually spent more than two hours with me going over the information, calculating a schedule – even counting the little balls inside Cymbalta so I knew how many little balls to take each day.  Cymbalta doesn’t come in enough doses to facilitate a taper – and they off NO tapering schedule.

Imagine that – Cymbalta doesn’t supply a tapering schedule.  They barely mention that there is a small chance of minor withdrawal.  Cymbalta’s suggestion if you have a hard time coming off the medication is to start taking it again.  What a huge help.  What a money maker for Eli-Lilly.  Make a drug you cant go off of and charge $300 a month for it.   Sidney Taurel, CEO of Eli-Lilly makes close to $10 Million a year.   Taurel serves as a Member of the President's Homeland Security Advisory Council, and Member of the President's Export Council.  Actually George W. Bush has personally appointed four executives from Eli Lilly and Company to positions on committees that effect public policy.   Controversies have festered  in congress when republicans slipped into a Homeland Defense bill a provision allowing Lilly to escape lawsuits.  Sometimes I think I may be fighting a losing battle with Eli-Lilly, but they have destroyed my life and I refuse to let them do this to another person or family.

http://www.antidepressantsfacts.com/cymbalta-duloxetine.htm

http://www.antidepressantsfacts.com/taper.htm

SUMMARY OF MY SYMPTOMS:

(Common to Cymbalta)

Head Flashes:

Mental Impairment:

Sleepiness:

Headaches:

Physical Body:

•Hair loss, dry hair, dry skin, boil-like blotches on face