"Stopping taking a medication that made me ill resulted in me being sent back to the referring service!"

My local hospital asked for advice from the Rheumatology department at Addenbrookes.  Addenbrookes suggested a treatment which my local hospital put me on.  Wow, it made me so very, very ill!  Despite vomiting every single day for a couple of months and losing 1/5 of my body weight, experiencing rapidly declining strength, increasing blood pressure, new and increased pain and becoming increasingly breathless, confused and unable to function (I was sacked from my job as the side effects of the medication made it impossible for me to work).

Addenbrookes advised my local hospital to press ahead with that treatment and to increase the dose, so my local hospital continued to tell me to take the tablets.  I went, privately, to an optician as my vision was becoming very blurred, who advised the medication was caused the issues with my eyesight.   When I started passing out and was struggling to even move around a single room at home I contacted my GP and explained what was going on. 

He advised me that I must not take the medication anymore and I filled out a Yellow Card.  I began to feel better once off the medication, but still had some of the initial symptoms the local hospital was trying to treat.  The outcome of my GP withdrawing the medication was that Addenbrookes wrote to my local hospital advising they do not think it will be worthwhile for me to be seen in their department and that I need to be seen by my local hospital due to me 'opting out of medication (for a condition that I had not knowingly been diagnosed with)'!   

I am still waiting for that appointment at my local hospital.  Whilst some of the side effects of the medication are dragging on, some have resolved and the others seem to be improving slowly.