Dear Members,

The more stories I hear, including my own, the more I wonder how
many of you or the people you are writing about, like your children
or friends' children, took antibiotics within a year of having
photophobia/dry eye, and other symptoms. I am looking in particular
for anyone who may have taken an antibiotic known as Cephalexin,
also known as Keflex or Keftab. I am trying to gather information
from as many people as possible in case there is a link so that the
drug manufacturer and FDA can be notified. I am tired of all of the
misdiagnoses I have gotten and the easy way out that my doctors have
taken: "it's stress." I just don't believe it. I will not share
any private information with anyone without your written
persmission.

Potential Symptoms

Within three or so months after taking the antibiotic:
*dry eyes or burning eyes (you might have thought it was just bad
allergies)
*light sensitivity
*moderate to severe headaches, you might consider them "sinus"
headaches or migraines
*fatigue
*joint pain

Immediate symptoms:
*forgetfulness
*disorientation
*feeling that you are unsteady on your feet
*may have to remind yourself to inhale
*things slipping through your fingers more and more
*talking more loudly than usual
*doing things without thinking, like taking a sip of something
really hot when you would normally test the liquid before sipping it
*delayed reactions -- like you sip that really hot tea and you know
it's way too hot and burning your tongue, but you just don't respond
normally and immediately spit out the tea, instead you hold the tea
in your mouth too long before spitting it out and your tongue is so
burned it takes a month to heal
*saying things and then realizing that you kind of have to let your
brain catch up with your words
*unusual agitation (probably from being just so frustrated that all
this is happening to you)
*for women: your periods start to come early every month, much worse
cramping, and more severe PMS mood swings
*the symptoms may occur randomly, and potentially lessen over
several months
*written information is hard to comprehend, missing things on the
page
*if you were to try to match up a column of one set of items with
another column, like a column of ABCD, and 1234, and you have
trouble matching up the numbers to the letters like A=1, B=2, and so
on, and you've never had this happen before
*you take glucosamine chondroitin or some similar glucosamine joint
product
*Some symptoms might be more persistent and others more temporary;
you might already have experienced some of these symptoms before,
but now they are exaggerated and very frequent.