Also, having had reactions to zithromycin and one or more antibiotic eye drops which caused a doctor to casually mention that it might be a sulfa allergy, would I get any benefit from insisting on further investigation?
Well, considering that azithromycin is *not* a sulfa (were the eye drops?), I'd give that doctor the side-eye. But also keep an eye on any antibiotic in the -mycin family -- EXCEPT clindamycin, which is actually NOT in the same family of drugs. I know it's weird as hell, and it was named poorly.
Azithromycin, clarithromycin, erythromycin -- all in the same family. Clindamycin -- different family.
The one AB eye drops they list in my official list of allergies is trimethoprim-polymyxin B. Following the reaction to that, I had another reaction to the Gentamicin eye drops the doc at the clinic was not completely certain was allergy because it might have been some weird interaction between that and Naphcon A I was using concurrently to treat the original allergic reaction. The pharmacist at Walgreens gave the doc the side eye over that idea on the grounds that I was leaving sufficient time in between doses of the two eye drops that the two drugs shouldn't really mess with each other.
So a sulfa allergy IS a "thing". Is it only in antibiotics?
I don't have an allergy, per se, but the one time I was on a sulfa drug, I didn't eat for three days.
My one friend takes antibiotics baaaaaaadly. She just noticed that she seems to have less "coming out both ends" when the pill bottle smells sweet as opposed to sulphury.
She just noticed that she seems to have less "coming out both ends"
Well, antibiotics will screw up intestinal flora with no remorse.
They do. And she's better when she takes a pro-biotic along with it... but the sulfas seem to do her more wrong than the nons.
And people just develop drug allergies. It's weird. I took penicillin forever and suddenly developed an allergy when I was 21.
I've been allergic to amoxycillin since I was a child.
Hey, me too! I keep thinking I should get one of those Med-Alert bracelets, but I don't.
I remember SF F2F meltdowns. I was at home, by myself for mine. Good times.
I seem to have the opposite of a sulfa allergy: it's the only antibiotic I don't have a bad reaction to. I'm allergic to penicillin and its cousins, I had the weirdest most unsettling reaction ever to Levaquin, and the mycin family puts me in the bathroom and does horrible things to me.
