Omeprazole has ruined my life

I have been taking omeprazole 20mg every day for about 8 years now.

Around February 2019 I started coughing, feelling dizzy and having typical flu symptoms. After 14 days of feeling sick I went to the doctor. Took blood tests, and even an chest X-ray. Everything came out fine. I was slowly feeling better. Took about 2 months. Then next symptom appeared.

Blurred vision. That started out with me being sensitive to bright light, sometimes I needed to turn off the light in my office. and then my next eye problem, keeping objects in focus. I went to check my vision, but my eye doctor said everything was OK. He said it could be related to my computer job, and that mye eyes needed more relaxation. I tried everything. Eye exercises etc. Nothing helped.

In August was when things really started to amplify. I got chest pains and it was like my heart wanted to jump out of my chest. The strange thing was that when I went to the emergency room, the EKG didn't show any signs of problems with my heart. I even had an portable EKG monitor for 72 hours. The only report was that my heartbeat was a little fast during sleep, but "not over limit". This problem was on and off several times a week.

My third symptom came the following month. I was feeling constantly dizzy my blurred vision was getting worse, I couldn't concentrate at work. One day my symptoms all together was so bad I actually lost consciousness at work while I was sitting in my chair. I think I was blacked out for 10 sec. When I came to myself again I vomited.

At that point I made an appointment to my doctor that I got 4 days later. In the mean time I was staying helpless in my bed couldn't do anything due to the severe symptoms all together. I couldn't eat nor sleep. When I closed mye eyes I felt drunk. I also had the worst panic attacks.

When I came to the doctor, he did a series of blood test and sent me to MRI and I also talked to a neurologist. A few days later my blood work came back fine and so did my MRI. I was told this could be related to stress at work. So the doctor forwarded a paper to my work saying I was sick and needed time off. He also prescribed me diazepam for my panic attacks.

I believed that this actually could have been stress. During my time off from work my symptoms were still going up and down.

Now after almost a year I realized this actually could have something to do with omeprazole. Because of the days when my symptoms was severe I was too sick to eat food or to take my medication (omeprazole), and when I felt better I tried to go back to my routine, taking my medication again. And then after a few days symptoms where getting worse again. Now it's almost 1 week since I have stopped taking omeprazole and all symptoms except my blurred vision is almost gone. My heartburn is back of course. So now I just take does over the counter chewing tabs after meals, not work as well, but much better than going blind and insane.

I ask myself a few questions.

Maybe it's too early to know if omeprazole really is my problem?

Why didn't any of the specialists and doctors suspect this medication?

If my body has tolerated daily dosage of omeprazole for 8 years, why suddenly all the side effects?

Is my blurred vision going to be permanent?

Has anyone fully recovered from this?

-K

l stop taking interest in this page because some of my replies were deleted its happened.again and.I don't know why. I have.shared honest and personnel experiences thinking they might help someone else

I've spent the last couple of hours reading through these forums and other bits and pieces on google and so much of it rings true with me too.

Some background information,

I'm currently 35 years old and had been suffering from varying degrees of acid reflux , which has admittedly been exasperated by my job as a truck driver and the lifestyle that entails. I don't eat particularly unhealthily, but it is all too common to finish a long 10-16 hour day with a meal in the truck, followed by bed either immediately or soon after without giving time for the food to digest before laying down etc.

This went on for some years and back in the autumn of 2017 I developed the worst cough and chest infection of my life with awful wheezing and a feeling that I just couldn't breathe properly, as if my airways were constricted or something like that.

My doctor prescribed some antibiotics and two different inhalers which sort of helped but I had the wheeze for 3 or 4 months and have had periodical bouts of difficulty breathing ever since, so coming up to two and a half years at this point.

In the Spring of 2019 my doctor prescribed Omeprazole due to me never being able to shake off the acid reflux and my firm belief that it was stomach acid, or gas, that entered my airways and lungs and caused the affore mentioned chest and breathing issues.

At first all was great, within 2 or 3 days my acid reflux was completely gone, I could eat absolutely anything without issue. After a couple of weeks I stopped taking it every day and resorted to taking it as and when I thought I needed it. This too went fine. Then by Autumn 2019 I was getting worse and worse heartburn and the difficulty in breathing was coming back so I went back on the Omeprazole full time.

After perhaps a month, maybe a bit longer on Omeprazole full time, I started noticing heart palpitations and general feelings of unease and I started to panic that I had heart disease of some sort, especially as I would get occasional mild chest pains when riding my mountain bike if pushing myself hard. So I booked an appointment with the doctor again and he sent me for a camera down my throat (sorry, forget the proper name) and for a stress test and a 24hr ECG monitor.

Shortly after that visit and before the camera and stress test etc I was making my way back to Canada in the truck from Georgia and just didn't feel well, heart palpitations, excessive sweating, yeah it was hot down in GA but not that hot and as the days went by, I started getting anxious about being caught out in the US and being ruined by health costs should I be taken ill there. I mean, I have travel health insurance but who really trusts them to pay it when push comes to shove?

Anyway, I got back over the border in to Canada and parked up that night, about a days drive from home. The feelings of unease wouldn't leave me, I kept waking up and being restless, my heart was racing, it was beating erratically, I was sweating and feeling light headed and seriously thought I was going to die due to a heart attack and then had images of being found dead in the truck, worrying what my wife and two very young children would do without me and I went in to a full bore panic attack, although I had no idea at the time that's what it was. I thought my heart was about to pack in so I called 911 and got taken to a nearby hospital.

At the hospital they did blood tests (Don't know what for), x-rays and other physical examinations and found absolutely nothing wrong with me outside of a moderately elevated blood pressure. Obviously I couldn't believe that I could feel so violently ill without there being something blatantly wrong with me for them to find, but that was the case and away I was sent. None of this did anything to make me feel any better, I was still panicking about the state of my heart and just wanted to get home. I figured if I was going to be seriously ill, or worse, that I'd prefer to be at home near by family. So, I managed to drive home, no easy feat in that state of mind and proceeded to have a few weeks off work.

I went back in to see my doctor on the Monday morning following this episode in the truck and he obviously dismissed the idea that Omeprazole could be the cause but booked me in for a camera down the throat to see what was going on in my stomach and if the acid reflux had caused any damage and also for a stress test and 24hr ECG monitor for me to wear at home.

I had the 24hr monitor first and that did indeed show something like 3000 PVC's (Premature Ventricular Contrations), basically the heart palpitations but said they didn't look dangerous and were probably down to caffeine or anxiety. It was at this point that I did more reading in to Omeprazole and came to the conclusion that this was the cause of my issues so stopped taking it right then and there. I didn't have acid rebound as such, or not for more than a few days but I got hit by intense waves of depression and general feelings of being unwell, sort of like how you feel washed out and drained as the flu is taking hold, but before the fever etc.

I then had the stress test and that came back fine too. The doctor told me that I was in "excellent shape for a truck driver", I then pointed out that the average age of a truck driver was proper 60 or more so that was small comfort to a 35 year old and that I actually felt terrible and told him of my concerns about the Omeprazole and he merely said "No, very unlikely" and that was that.

So, going forward from then, which was in either late October or early November, to present, January 2020, I have been in a state of revolving turmoil. To start with, I would feel fine for days, or even weeks at a time with only occasional bouts of suddenly depression that wouldn't last for long. Then, I'd start getting immense fatigue, that pre flu feeling of drained numbness, like a malaise and the depression. To start with I'd feel fine for the majority of the time and have these symptoms occasionally and not for all that long, maybe a few hours, or a day at most but as Christmas neared the balance started to shift and I'd feel ill and depressed more and more so my doctor did more blood tests and a thyroid test, which all apparently came back fine and then abruptly told me that he didn't want to see me anymore and to go elsewhere as my condition could be chronic and he didn't want to deal with it, all this in a country where many people have no family doctor at all and the waiting list for one can be 2 years or more.

I had two weeks off over Christmas and admittedly it was a hectic time with lots of sleep interruptions, as we have children aged 2 and 4 and my state of mind worsened and I became depressed more and more. I can feel it coming on, I know its happening and there is nothing I can do to stop it and once its set in I feel almost useless. I can't concentrate on anything, the smallest of tasks feel monumental, I just want to sleep all the time and I have wild mood swings, sometimes with strong suicidal urges, though I do still have the presence of mind to make sure I don't act on them. Sometimes these periods of depression can last all day, or longer, other times I may be depressed in the morning and afternoon and then feel absolutely fine in the evening and night, only for it to return again.

As time goes on, the ratio of feeling depressed to feeling fine is tipping firmly in favour of being depressed and I now worry it will be my constant state of mind before long. I had another panic attack in the truck last week, though this time I knew what it was and rode it out in misery and finally fell asleep but it was a struggle to finish my week at work and get home. At times I felt 100% fine and at other times my mind was in racing turmoil over everything, constantly thinking bad things, usually to do with what was wrong with me and how I'd ultimately die from it, and at times I would be glad I'd die, that I and everyone else would be better off that way, and at other times I would be desperately anxious about it, not wanting that to happen and be desperate to feel better.

Throughout all this the heart palpitation have been with me and getting more and more frequent and I did notice that they were far worse after any intake of things with caffeine in them, so gradually I've cut out tea, soft drinks and even chocolate etc and that seems to have helped with the palpitations and now I usually on get them when I think about something that makes me anxious, then they return, whereas before they happened constantly regardless of my state of mind but as of yet, the reduction in palpitations, if they indeed remain reduced, has not followed with a reduction of depression, anxiety of fatigue and like everyone else here I'm at my wits end as to how to proceed. I don't feel able, or even safe to continue working but at the same time no one is taking me seriously and I can't just sit at home when I have a family to financially support but I'm getting to the point now where I feel like I can't drive the truck anymore, for my own safety and also for others on the road. So far I don't think I've been a risk in the truck to anyone but I spend half my day wanting to just park on the side of the road, lay down in the bed and wallow in my mental state until it passes and these feelings are getting stronger and more and more frequent.

Last week I found a hard area under one armpit, which obviously got my anxiety up again so I'm going to go to the hospital about that, though it has shrunk in size a lot since, though not gone yet so I'd rather play safe and while there I'm going to try and get them to take everything else seriously but I'm extremely worried that they will either dismiss it all and send me home, which is highly likely with our hospital, or strike the proverbial peanut with a sledge hammer and prescribe some kind of awful anti anxiety or depression pill that will make things even worse in much the same was that Omeprazole has done.

I just hope and pray that someone will tell me that I'm deficient in some kind of vitamin or mineral, even if they won't admit that Omeprazole is the cause and that it'll be a relatively easy fix but as time goes on this just seems more and more complicated and never ending. I thought that the longer I was off Omeprazole, the better things would get and I'd slowly return to normal, but the opposite seems to be the case and the longer I'm off of it, the worse I've become.

I'm sorry for the insanely long novel here, I just needed to get it off my chest and make sense of it all myself. It's been going on for so long now with so many different symptoms and twists and turns, I forget where it all began and writing it all out as in some way made sense of it all a bit better.

I just want to finish off my wishing everyone else good luck with getting over this and that I really hope those who started this thread way back are now better or at least well on the road to being better.