Lactic Acidosis... Close call? Anyone else with this same experience?

Rainbow_Chakra · 05-28-2009, 02:52 AM

A specialist I seen about a month after my 'episode' said I had experienced Lactic Acidosis. My symptoms were sweating, heart palpitations, loss of feeling in my left-side, headache, feelings of loosing of consciousness, a throbbing weird feeling in my brain, very stiff neck and hella sore muscles.

The doctor who prescribed metformin said I had a migraine... yeah ok. I stopped the metformin immediately. I continued to feel terrible for weeks after that. I went to 3 specialists and the infectious disease specialist said I have no west nile or contagious meningitis. What I experienced was Lactic Acidosis. She said she had seen it before in young women. They get weak and sick... They keep taking the MET and then they need a liver transplant!!!

I was surprised. I had a feeling MET had something to do with my sudden and severe illness, but my idea was that Lactic acidosis came on so fast and you almost died within hours unless you got immediate treatment. BUT this lady specialist I seen said that she had seen young women die from Metformin before. She says you can get buildup of lactic acid for a few days before your liver finally fails. That the final stages of lactic acidosis are the critical ones they speak of in the warnings. So I am wondering if she is not correct. It makes sense.

I should have went to the hospital that night as it was happening to me. But I live in a city in Canada that has about a 10 hour emergency room waiting list (oh wonderful free health care). I was feeling so incredibly awful and I didn't want to lay uncomfortable on the dirty hospital floor. NOTHING would have been done to me promptly anyway (trust me I've been there before, until you are here you have no idea how bad our health care system in emergency situations is - unless you are bleeding -you do not get priority).

So I called my friend who is a nurse to watch over me that night to take me to the doctor's office the next morning. The doctor I went to that days said it was migraine... (With all those symptoms, I don't think so.) I've had a few migraines before and none involved profuse sweating, delirium, stiff neck, feeling like I was going to loose consciousness or feeling like my entire body had been run over by a steam roller.

Interestingly I lived. After finding out a month later from the specialists that that is what I had. Quite a different experience from what i read Lactic Acidosis was supposed to be like on the side-effects label.

So I am really believing now that Lactic Acidosis can come on slower in some people. If I hadn't listened to my body and stopped taking the metformin I would have needed a new liver.

Since then I get sick all the time and can't drink half a glass of beer without being totally drunk and hung over the next day. Needless to say I've quit drinking all forms of alcohol entirely... And to answer your question, No, I was not drinking alcohol while on metformin.

Anyone else with similar experience?

Shawn Marie · 06-09-2009, 03:12 AM

I've been taking 500mg/day Metformin for the last three years. The doc who diagnosed me moved shortly after starting me on Met, and the doc to whom he referred me kept saying "let's hold off on that" when it came to increasing the dose (my face was cleared up and hair growing back, but no weight loss at all and my periods only controlled by BCP). Finally, when my face started breaking out again out of the blue, I found another doc who could say "PCOS" without a question mark, and she immediately bumped me up to 1500mg/day.

Within a couple of days I was suffering from extreme fatigue and anxiety, and it just kept getting worse. My description of being exhausted all the time was blown off, I think because she thought I was making excuses for not exercising more. After two months, I ended up firing her and going to see someone else who was horrified to hear I'd been bumped from 500 to 1500 literally overnight, and who immediately halved the dose, although she couldn't believe the anxiety was caused by the Met because it's not a published side-effect.

Few days later, I accidentally popped a second pill after dinner (as had been my habit before having the dose reduced). Within an hour I'm exhausted, anxious, and achy all over. I couldn't sleep despite being exhausted, so I started researching... and came up with lactic acidosis.

This was yesterday. I have a horrible metallic taste in my mouth still, although the anxiety is abated. I'd hate to think what condition I'd be in now if the dose hadn't been halved a few days ago!

So assuming I'm right about it being lactic acidosis, it also solves a much longer-term puzzle for me. For the last three years (and I didn't realize the time correlation until now), I have tried getting into a regular exercise routine, only to find myself becoming increasingly fatigued as the days passed and finally becoming sick so I had to stop.

I'm weaning off of Metformin ASAP. I think it's pretty clear this is the wrong route for controlling my PCOS. What to me is most scary is that everyone missed it.

So yes, I'd agree that lactic acidosis can come on much slower in some people, and that it may have a cumulative effect over time. I feel so much like I've dodged a bullet...