new medicine nightmare

[babygale]

i went to my dr on monday for regular checkup and med refills  and she recomended i try xanax in place of the ativan that i've been on for years  well tuesday evening around bedtime i started having trouble breathing,rapid heart beat, panic nausea  my husband rushed me to hospital they took my vitals b/p 182/165  felt like throat was closing up and mouth dried out  they put oxygen on me kept my blood pressure going every 15 min hooked me up to ekg machine  and mixed me up what they called a cocktail   (whatever )  i never did like malox and it also had lidocane and some thing else nasy mixed in it... dr says here drink this it will help you breath... it numb your throat  well that scared me  and i said i cant breath and you want me to take something that numbs my throat....i drank it and it numbs your throat and your tongue and lips and tastes like... well
my breathing got better and i went home......
took my ambien and went to sleep,,  got up with same feeling almost as bad called my dr. went there and they gave me a shot of benedryl in my hip and sent me home with a prescription of ativan... been trying to rest for hours  left dr at 10 picked up ativan at 12 ish and its 3:53 p.m right now.. still nauseated and bad headache and little anxious feeling....  i am curious how long the xanax takes to get out of your system and if i took the ativan too soon.  just want to feel  better...

any ideas

[cnote]

sounds more like an allergic reaction to xanax? possibly?

[abby10]

Why don't doctors properly advise patients about drugs. Why are the paients the ones that know more about what these drugs do than the doctors??? (for the most part). Why do patients have to go through what this lady went through? It's happened to me more than once and its extremely horrible.

I don't think doctors are being properly trained about medications. Many only know what the drugs reps tell them and now the pharmacist sometimes goes only by what the drug rep and other patients say. Then the doc turns around and prescribes a new drug to a patient and the FDA and the pharmas are using the patients as guinea pigs.

The body is extremely sensitive to benzos and doctors should be very careful about tapering people off and crossing people over to other benzos, but they aren't.  God forbid a doctor yanks you off a powerful benzo and then you run to the ER not knowing why you feel so horrible. Then the doctors treat you like a junkie or a crazy person. And the pills were taken as prescribed.

People need to be very careful about what pills they put in their mouths, because blaming the doctor does not cut it anymore in the age of the internet.

Drugs can have a bad effect when combined with one another and no one knows what drugs shouldn't be combined with other drugs because there are not any studies being done on drug combinations. The Brittany Murphy case is an example of this.

I would do much research before taking any pill prescribed to me.

abby

[RubyWitch]

Even though Ativan and Xanax are in the same family of Benzodiazepams, and both are short acting, they do have their differences and one cannot just jump from one to the other without paying a price. After long term use of Ativan, which, by the way, should not be used long term, as in >4 months, to abruptly change you over to Xanax without a taper was irresponsible. In my humble opinion, what is happening to you is Ativan withdrawal. I would definitely speak with your doctor about this. It's very possible that simply reinstating the Ativan will relieve your symptoms and then a proper taper can be done to switch you to the Xanax. But I would also discuss the benefits of going onto a long acting benzo like Klonopin. It will not lose it's efficacy like Ativan and Xanax but will control your panic just as well, if not better, as it will not have the ups and down like the other two. It is dosed, ideally, 3X qd so there will be no more watching the clock.  
The hospital would NEVER have released you if your blood pressure was not within normal ranges. It should be something that you and your doctor will want to monitor for awhile.
Peace
Greenlydia  

[mammo]

I too, am concerned about your BP, hope you are monitoring it.

[Julie359]

I do hope that ur blood pressure came down as that is very high.  Have they put you on blood pressure medication?

[Paxiled]

Because you were on the ativan for a long time, you said years, you're probably suffering withdrawal from it.  It's not necessarily so that a different med will stop withdrawal of another med even if they're in the same class.  You usually taper slowly off the med you were on for years and slowly switch to the new med.  However, since Xanax and ativan are both short acting benzos, if the ativan was working well for you, I don't see the advantage in switching.  I would see why they might want to put you on a longer acting benzo such as klonopin, but not switching from something that worked to something that works pretty much the same and has all the same problems long-term.

[MrGreen]

Xanax lasts up to 8 hours or less. It is a quick kick in medication. Normally dosed out 3 times a day at various amounts. As for all your problems? Some meds can bounce off each other. Double or triple the side effects and the likes. I am not sure about those types. To me they are one in the same. As in similar types of medication. It might have been the whole thought of coming of the activan. Or the xanax was a lower dose. And withdrawls kicked in. I am sure someone who knows more about activan will add extra to my reply. But let me assure you the xanax would be long since gone out of your system. Could be a bad mixture of medication mixing together and causing you to feel as you did. The doctor gave you a shot too. Be interesting to see if you can calm yourself back down to where you were at before this all began. Only similar experience I had was with exfexor and xanax. They just bounced and sent me through the roof. I was in bits. Like you have described. So some tablets can do that. But like I said, the xanax is long out of your system. Just hope it didn't effect the working of the activan. Long term wise.