Hallo again!
I'm one of those people who has lifelong problems with certain drugs and foods. Mostly, my anaphylaxes (which is a severe form of allergy which is life-threatening therefore I have to avoid certain drugs) are fairly common; things like Penicillin and Elastoplast. But, unfortunately for me, I'm also anaphylactically allergic to Beta-Lactems and Cephalosporins (both antibiotics which are vaguely related to the Penicillin family tree) as well as various other things.
However, since developing leukemia, I seem to have started developing anaphylactic responses to a whole plethora of things which have never been problematical in the past.
In particular, to anesthetics which is a real problem. Local anesthetics too, in fact, the most commonly used local anesthetic has a preservative within it which they've now discovered I am allergic to and this is causing the problem. I've been referred to a Clinical Pharmacologist who does "bespoke prescribing" which is a posh way of saying he checks out ALL drugs before I actually take them just to make sure I'm ok as, so far, I've ended up in full anaphylaxis three times since being diagnosed. Prior to being diagnosed, my allergies were so stable that it rarely, if ever, happened, that I suffered such a thing as I knew which drugs to avoid.
They assume the leukemia has somehow affected my tolerance levels but, as you might imagine, this problem with such a large group of antibiotics is a real issue with leukemia since I nearly always seem to have an infection and they're finding it harder and harder to keep on top of them as they're so limited with what they can safely give me. So, each time, I end up taking more than one drug in order that they might reasonably hope to deal with the infection, usually a combination of drugs whereas, if I were not allergic, I could probably take one broad spectrum antibiotic.
It's a problem, a real problem and it's becoming more problematical as there are also some antibiotics, such as one called Clindamycin which are not recommended for any kind of long term or repeated use as they have potential medical risks associated with them (bowel problems mostly and, since I quite often suffer diarrhoea anyway - sorry, too much info probably!) this is not good.
I just wondered if anyone else had had similar problems? I do worry about what will happen when I have my transplant if I start developing very resistant infections. They obviously have a care plan to deal with this but it does bother me as there seem to be so few things I can take.
