To Cheryl - h0p had toxoplasmosis too: Was Scarlett

damn, my doctor wants to put me on this. I am a diabetic (have been since
age 9) and I think I am finally getting some neuropathic pain in myh lower
limbs. I have a friend who has MS and started taking this for some pain she
was experiencing and she started to lose muscle control. She kept falling
until she finally stopped taking the medication. So, I am hesitant to take
it. I can hardly walk long distances because of the leg/feet pain I get when
I do walk, but I am really thinking twice about going on this medication.
::sigh::


--

Irulan
from the stars we come
to the stars we return
from now until the end of time
"CatNipped" wrote in message
...
"Howard Berkowitz" wrote in message
...

Neurontin (generic name gabapentin) isn't quite a major breakthrough
drug, as in a completely new therapeutic class, but it's an important
improvement both for preventing convulsion and treating pain from nerve
damage. In the present climate of problems in reporting side effects, I
thought I might add one that's been observed by several human physicians
I know, but isn't mentioned in the product literature.

I have no way of knowing if this will occur in cats, but it appears to
cause weight gain in a fair number of humans. In some of these cases,
that may even be beneficial, to a patient that's debilitated from
convulsions or intractable nerve pain. Up to very recently, it was the
best thing we had for diabetic neuropathic pain, although a new and
specific agent has just been approved for that indication. Research I'm
tracking indicate that it's reasonably likely that several new classes
of pain management drugs will be reaching approval soon, but I have no
idea if they can be used in cats.

Please be careful and do a lot of research before using Neurontin. Pfizer
has promoted this drug for at least 11 "off-label" medical conditions,
including pain management (pain management is a multi-billion dollar
market). Here's a link that tells more about their unethical practices:
http://www.citizen.org/ELETTER/ARTICLES/neurontin.htm

From the article:

"A senior marketing executive at Parke-Davis was quoted during a
teleconference as saying to medical liaisons:

Pain management, now that's money. Monotherapy, that's money. We don't
want to share these patients with everybody, we want them on Neurontin
only. We want their whole drug budget, not a quarter, not half, the whole
thing....That's where we need to be holding their hand and whispering in
their ear: 'Neurontin for pain, Neurontin for monotherapy, Neurontin for
everything' ... I don't want to hear that safety crap either, have you
tried Neurontin, every one of you should take one just to see there is
nothing [that the drug is safe], it's a great drug."

It was prescribed to me for my Fibromyalgia and when I had to quit taking
it the withdrawal was devastating - including nausea, feeling electrical
shock-like tingling all over my body, headache, dizziness, swelling limbs,
black-out episodes (quite scary when driving), trembling, feeling
increased pain, and panic attacks.

Hugs,

CatNipped

On Mon, 27 Dec 2004 19:50:59 -0500, "Irulan"
wrote:

damn, my doctor wants to put me on this. I am a diabetic (have been since
age 9) and I think I am finally getting some neuropathic pain in myh lower
limbs. I have a friend who has MS and started taking this for some pain she
was experiencing and she started to lose muscle control. She kept falling
until she finally stopped taking the medication. So, I am hesitant to take
it. I can hardly walk long distances because of the leg/feet pain I get when
I do walk, but I am really thinking twice about going on this medication.
::sigh::

This entire discussion of Neurontin is disturbing to me as my dad's
been taking it for a while now (diabetic neuropathy in his legs). As
far as I can tell, he's not had any trouble with pain, loss of muscle
control, lost balance or falling due to his medication. To the
contrary, he's gotten better since he's been on it.

YMMV



Jeanne Hedge, as directed by Natasha

============
http://www.jhedge.com

In article , "Irulan"
wrote:

damn, my doctor wants to put me on this. I am a diabetic (have been since
age 9) and I think I am finally getting some neuropathic pain in myh
lower
limbs. I have a friend who has MS and started taking this for some pain
she
was experiencing and she started to lose muscle control. She kept falling
until she finally stopped taking the medication. So, I am hesitant to
take
it. I can hardly walk long distances because of the leg/feet pain I get
when
I do walk, but I am really thinking twice about going on this medication.
::sigh::

While there's a good deal of positive experience with Neurontin
(gabapentin) in diabetic neuropathic pain, its use is an off-label
indication. Two drugs were approved in 2004 with specific indications
for diabetic neuropathy, Cymbalta(duloxetine) and Lyrica (Pregabalin).
You might want to discuss these with your doctor.

Duloxetine is not an anticonvulsant, but an antidepressant. Certain
"first-generation" tricyclic antidepressants such as amitriptyline
(Elavil) are useful in a variety of chronic pain conditions. These drugs
affect two kinds of neurotransmitters, serotonin and norepinephrine. The
"second generation", typified by fluoxetine (Prozac), selectively affect
only serotonin. A new group, perhaps not a new generation, affects both
neurotransmitters, but by a different mechanism than the tricyclics.
Duloxetine is in this group. It is also a clinically effective
antidepressant, if that's a consideration.

Pregabalin is closely related to gabapentin, but, in oversimplified
terms, is "purer" -- both drugs affect the same neurotransmitter pathway
(GABA [1]), but both need to undergo conversion in the body to affect
the pathway. Pregabalin is "further along" that pathway, and has a much
lower dose than gabapentin. It's hypothesized that the lower active
dose, and the improved molecule, may have a decreased incidence of side
effects over gabapentin. Yes, it's also a Pfizer drug, and gabapentin
is close to going generic where this new one is not.

[1] gamma aminobutyric acid. Did you really want to know? Now do you
understand why scientists call it GABA?

In article , Jeanne Hedge
wrote:

On Mon, 27 Dec 2004 19:50:59 -0500, "Irulan"
wrote:

damn, my doctor wants to put me on this. I am a diabetic (have been
since
age 9) and I think I am finally getting some neuropathic pain in myh
lower
limbs. I have a friend who has MS and started taking this for some pain
she
was experiencing and she started to lose muscle control. She kept
falling
until she finally stopped taking the medication. So, I am hesitant to
take
it. I can hardly walk long distances because of the leg/feet pain I get
when
I do walk, but I am really thinking twice about going on this
medication.
::sigh::

This entire discussion of Neurontin is disturbing to me as my dad's
been taking it for a while now (diabetic neuropathy in his legs). As
far as I can tell, he's not had any trouble with pain, loss of muscle
control, lost balance or falling due to his medication. To the
contrary, he's gotten better since he's been on it.

Of the people I know that actually take Neurontin, most have had
benefits and one had no effect. They have reported side effects of
sedation and weight gain. Physician friends speak very highly of it --
and I should note that some of these were worried about Vioxx in 2000.

If I had an indication for it. I wouldn't hesitate to take it, being
aware of the possible side effects. Yes, I might prefer to take the
newer Lyrica, although I'd want to study the literature in more detail.
Cost might be a factor, and a reasonable approach might be to start with
Neurontin and go to Lyrica only if there are problems.

"Howard Berkowitz" wrote in message
...

snipped lots of good pharmacological information

In other words, it's not all evil drug companies.

Well...

I can't disagree with anything you wrote (mostly because so much of it went
right over my head so far it didn't even muss my hair ;), but I think you
can admit that the pharmaceutical companies are not in the business for
philanthropic reasons. Just like the rest of us capitalists, they're out to
make a buck. I'm not even saying that they are knowingly pushing harmful
drugs on an unsuspecting public only to line their own pockets - I'm sure
most of them believe in their products.

But...

My best friend is a nurse and I know several other people in the medical
profession, and I have heard some personal accounts of drug company
representatives doing the following:

- Giving "luncheons" for a "Continuing Education Programs" on certain drugs
to doctors (even the nurses and techs are invited) at the most expensive
restaurants.

- Giving out other gifts to doctors just for allowing them to leave samples
of their drugs.

- Giving physicians free trips and monetary "incentives" for giving out a
certain "quota" of prescriptions to their drugs.

- Asking doctors to prescribe a drug and then fill out a nominal
questionnaire once a week for a few weeks and then giving them as much as
$10,000 for doing so.

- Lobbying congress and spending huge amounts of their billion dollar
profits on passing legislation that promotes their "cause".

- Writing PDRs (physician's desk reference) (these are put out by the
pharmaceutical companies, not by the AMA) to "slant" information about what
drugs should be prescribed for which symptoms.

- Working hand-in-glove with the FDA and basically policing themselves when
in comes to warning labels and such.

This last one is harder to prove, but the proof can be self evident when we
look at the recent problems that have surfaced with Vioxx and other pain
medications.

My friend, a nurse, works in a psychiatric hospital. The doctor she works
with noticed that the children he was treating with Risidol (or maybe it was
Celexor (SP?) - I can't remember which one she told me about) were showing
prolonged QT waves on their EKGs and repeatedly reported this to the drug
company. The drug company kept denying it for over a year until the
preponderance of this evidence became overwhelming and doctors petitioned
the FDA to require "black box" warnings on this drug.

Taking all of the above into account, it will be a cold day in h*ll before I
blithely allow a doctor to prescribe *any* medications to me that I don't
*thoroughly* investigate beforehand taking.

My experiences with Neurontin and Effexor were so harrowing that I would
have to be facing *death* before I agreed to take any long-term medications.
I was *NOT TOLD BEFOREHAND* that there were any side effects or withdrawal
problems associated with these drugs. My doctor is very diligent and I
don't think he was being ingenuous in prescribing these drugs - I just don't
think the drug companies are being very "up front" in their warnings. They
want to sell their products, of course they're not going to warn people not
to take them.

Yes, I should have "weaned" myself off the meds I was taking (it was
extremely stupid not to do so) and I probably should have been hospitalized
while doing so. However, I lost my job and along with it my insurance. The
medications I was taking cost several *thousands* of dollars a month and
without a job there was no way I could afford that. I seriously doubt that
it cost the drug companies thousands of dollars to produce these drugs even
if you factor in the costs of research and development, but nobody was
willing to give me a discount on the medications I needed to continue with
in order to prevent a possible catastrophic withdrawal.

Oh my, here I am on this darned soapbox again. Sorry Howard. I know you
know much more about this subject than I do, I didn't mean to preach!

Hugs,

CatNipped

In article , "CatNipped"
wrote:

"Howard Berkowitz" wrote in message
...

snipped lots of good pharmacological information

In other words, it's not all evil drug companies.

Well...

I can't disagree with anything you wrote (mostly because so much of it
went
right over my head so far it didn't even muss my hair ;), but I think
you
can admit that the pharmaceutical companies are not in the business for
philanthropic reasons. Just like the rest of us capitalists, they're out
to
make a buck. I'm not even saying that they are knowingly pushing harmful
drugs on an unsuspecting public only to line their own pockets - I'm sure
most of them believe in their products.

But...

My best friend is a nurse and I know several other people in the medical
profession, and I have heard some personal accounts of drug company
representatives doing the following:

[snipped any number of questionable marketing practices by drug
companies]

Trust me. I suspect I've seen worse abuses than in your whole list. I've
left a couple of corrections.



- Writing PDRs (physician's desk reference) (these are put out by the
pharmaceutical companies, not by the AMA) to "slant" information about
what
drugs should be prescribed for which symptoms.

The AMA doesn't write any drug guidelines, and it's often a
controversial organization. PDR descriptions of drugs are EXACT copies
of the "prescriber's instructions" that are approved word-for-word as
part of the FDA process of approving a New Drug Application. In many
cases, the FDA may require, based on field experience, the PDR to
contain a "black-bordered" warning of potential dangers, and when such a
finding is made, the FDA requires the manufacturer to send out "Dear
Doctor" letters to every physician.


- Working hand-in-glove with the FDA and basically policing themselves
when
in comes to warning labels and such.

I'm not sure of your point about working hand-in-glove with the FDA.
Yes, the manufacturers write the label text, and then that's reviewed by
an independent panel (i.e., not all FDA employees) as part of the drug
approval process. Physicians often use other drug references than the
PDR, because the PDR material is often written, or heavily edited, by
lawyers. It takes quite an amount of background to understand the risk
profile given in a PDR writeup, because those writeups tend to overstate
possible dangers to avoid liability. The PDR is usually the last of
several references I use when I need drug information.

The process of drug approval is complex, and, for good reasons of
balancing perfect safety against getting out potentially good drugs,
cannot be a perfect process. If you are interested, I can go into more
detail, but, in general terms, even a drug for a common disease will
have been tested, at best, in a few thousand patients before release.
The FDA runs a "Phase IV Postmarketing Surveillance" program after drugs
are in general use, where they may then be used in millions of patients.
Postmarketing surveillance depends on physicians voluntarily reporting
adverse drug effects to the FDA, and not every practitioner does this.

As a result, some side effects only show up after a drug has been in use
for some time, and has been given in the hundreds of millions of doses
(or more). My favorite example is the antihistamine Seldane, which was
considered so safe that there had been a preliminary recommendation to
allow it to be sold over the counter, without prescription. Just before
the authorization was given, a scientific paper came out that
established it could cause a rare but fatal disorder of heartbeat,
torsade de pointes. Since it was not the only drug for its purpose, it
was immediately pulled and never returned.

Other drugs, after being banned, may return for good reason and under
strict control. Thalidomide, for example, is extremely useful in leprosy
and a wide range of immune system disorders -- these applications were
not thought of at the time of its initial introduction. Even after the
major incidents with it, it was still used experimentally for leprosy,
and the clues on the other applications came from understanding how it
helped. The molecule it affects was probably not known at the time it
was proposed.

All drug prescribing is a balance between risk and reward; no drug is
completely safe. Penicillin is about the safest antibiotic known -- but
if it had first been tried in guinea pigs, rather than people, it would
never have gone into clinical use -- it kills guinea pigs, and ONLY
guinea pigs among mammals, very quickly.

This last one is harder to prove, but the proof can be self evident when
we
look at the recent problems that have surfaced with Vioxx and other pain
medications.

It's often less clear-cut than it might seem. I have some friends, a
married couple where he is a physician and she is a medical informatics
specialist, as I am. She has a variety of painful conditions, and VIoxx
is the _only_ drug that gives her a reasonable quality of life. Both
consider it a reasonable tradeoff, if it were still available, to make
an informed decision to use Vioxx. I have discussed this with them and I
think their reasoning is sound.

There are other drugs that are vastly more toxic than Vioxx, and used in
conditions where there are no alternatives.

If you really want to see me go ballistic, get me started on both
nonprescription drug advertising, and even more on direct-to-consumer
prescription drug advertising.

My friend, a nurse, works in a psychiatric hospital. The doctor she
works
with noticed that the children he was treating with Risidol (or maybe it
was
Celexor (SP?) - I can't remember which one she told me about) were
showing
prolonged QT waves on their EKGs and repeatedly reported this to the drug
company. The drug company kept denying it for over a year until the
preponderance of this evidence became overwhelming and doctors petitioned
the FDA to require "black box" warnings on this drug.

I'm not specifically familiar with this drug effect. I am, however,
fairly familiar with electrocardiology. QT prolongation gets caused by
many things, and isn't a guarantee of danger. It calls for closer
monitoring of the ECG in patients, and perhaps discontinuing a less than
critical drug in patients with known heart disease.

Taking all of the above into account, it will be a cold day in h*ll
before I
blithely allow a doctor to prescribe *any* medications to me that I don't
*thoroughly* investigate beforehand taking.

I have no good answer. No drug is prescribed for me that either I don't
already understand on a professional level, or that I go into a detailed
analysis. I am hesitatingly taking one drug, but am changing physicians
because I've lost confidence -- bluntly, I think I know pharmacology, at
least in the areas relevant to me, better than he does.

Getting to that level of knowledge, however, took many years of study,
which never stops. At some point, researching a drug's risks and
benefits calls either for your trusting other sources, or having a
significant scientific background -- emphatically including
biostatistics -- to be able to read the original papers and form your
own opinion.

My experiences with Neurontin and Effexor were so harrowing that I would
have to be facing *death* before I agreed to take any long-term
medications.
I was *NOT TOLD BEFOREHAND* that there were any side effects or
withdrawal
problems associated with these drugs. My doctor is very diligent and I
don't think he was being ingenuous in prescribing these drugs

I hate to disagree, but a doctor should know, without product-specific
warning, that abruptly stopping ANY anticonvulsant is dangerous. If you
look in the most common textbook of pharmacology, _Goodman & Gilman's
The Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics_, usually studied in the
second year of medical school, this is a basic warning for the class.

There would be less strong general caution in abruptly stopping a
serotonin/norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor like Effexor. I personally
know of people that have only been helped by Effexor, and others that
have had intolerable side effects. In one case, a physician prescribed
it for a friend, and when she told me, it took several minutes for me to
stop screaming threats at her physician, luckily 3000 miles away. It
wasn't so much that Effexor wasn't an appropriate drug for her
condition, but that she had other diseases, and took other drugs with
which Effexor could have lethal side effects. In that case, if the
doctor understood the pharmacology of Effexor well enough to prescribe
it, the potential interactions should have been BLATANTLY obvious
without a specific warning. She was the first person I knew that took
it, and I did need to look up its mechanism of action. I was screaming
after reading about a paragraph.


Yes, I should have "weaned" myself off the meds I was taking (it was
extremely stupid not to do so) and I probably should have been
hospitalized
while doing so. However, I lost my job and along with it my insurance.
The
medications I was taking cost several *thousands* of dollars a month and
without a job there was no way I could afford that.

Understood fully. If I didn't get a number of drugs through being in a
long-term clinical research program, I'd be facing the same coverage
problem. Luckily, for the ones not supplied there, I generally know the
costs and discuss alternatives with the prescriber. You might be
surprised that relatively few physicians know the retail price of the
drugs they describe.

I think a fair argument could be made that if you showed up at an
emergency room and explained you had had an anticonvulsant stopped
suddenly, you might be hospitalized on the spot under US law for
unstable emergency patients.

I seriously doubt
that
it cost the drug companies thousands of dollars to produce these drugs
even
if you factor in the costs of research and development, but nobody was
willing to give me a discount on the medications I needed to continue
with
in order to prevent a possible catastrophic withdrawal.


Well, there are several things going on here. The dirtiest secret is
that most major drug companies spend more on marketing than R&D. The
sales budget might be 25-30%, where the research might be 15-20%.

Economics are tricky. In developing a new drug, the cost exposure is on
the front end involving clinical trials. Many experimental drugs fail at
that phase.

The incremental manufacturing cost of making each successive pill is
quite low, but the economic model requires the company to recover its
front-end investment. A significant cost also built into the retail
price is liability reserves.

It's frustrating that there are more potential solutions to general
healthcare economics in the US, than there are to the specific issues of
drug cost. Reimportation isn't the answer. Somehow, there needs to be a
balance among real development costs, commercial viability, policies in
multiple countries, the costs of liability, and, last but definitely not
least, realistic expectations. There are no completely safe drugs, and
there never will be a pill to cure everything.

To get more on topic, the safety and economics are legitimately
different for cats. When Clifford (RB) developed bladder cancer, I
researched the options extensively. Had he been a human, there's almost
no question he could have been cured by surgery, but no veterinarian
would subject a cat to an artificial external bladder. He might have
had a research-level chance were he a dog, as there was active work in
laser treatment of dye-sensitized canine bladder tumors.

The veterinary oncologists, however, suggested the situation was not
without hope. They explained that they had a chemotherapy regimen that
had about a 30% chance of putting the disease into remission. He was 17
1/2, but extremely active.

When I heard of the main chemotherapeutic drug proposed, cisplatin, my
immediate reaction was thinking of euthanasia -- because if _I_ had a
cancer that could only be treated with cisplatin, I would probably ask
for comfort measures only -- the side effects in humans tend to be
horrible. Veterinarians I trusted, however, assured me that cats
tolerate it with mild discomfort at the worst.

Unfortunately, the disease was too far advanced, when discovered, to be
able to start a main chemotherapy regimen in time to try to give him a
couple of good years.

"Howard Berkowitz" wrote in message
...

I'm not sure of your point about working hand-in-glove with the FDA.
Yes, the manufacturers write the label text, and then that's reviewed by
an independent panel (i.e., not all FDA employees) as part of the drug
approval process. Physicians often use other drug references than the
PDR, because the PDR material is often written, or heavily edited, by
lawyers. It takes quite an amount of background to understand the risk
profile given in a PDR writeup, because those writeups tend to overstate
possible dangers to avoid liability. The PDR is usually the last of
several references I use when I need drug information.

Forgive me, I'm getting most of this second-hand from my friend and have
most probably mixed up information on procedures. I think she was talking
about the drug companies "policing themselves" and probable pay-offs to the
FDA - pure speculation, I'm sure. To give you a better insight into her
beliefs, I once asked her how she remains so healthy and her answer was,
"Easy, I *never* go to the doctor. It's their *business* to treat you, it's
how they make their money. If they can't find anything wrong with you
they're losing business, so of course they're going to find something wrong
with you. I find that most 'symptons' you ever experience will go away by
themselves if you just wait it out!" Did I mention that she's a bit cynical
about her profession? I don't propose adopting her philosophy - she has
been lucky enough to not ever have anything *really* wrong with her health.

snipped more very informative stuff

If you really want to see me go ballistic, get me started on both
nonprescription drug advertising, and even more on direct-to-consumer
prescription drug advertising.

Yeah, I cringe every time I hear, "Ask your doctor if xxxxx is right for
you!"

I have no good answer. No drug is prescribed for me that either I don't
already understand on a professional level, or that I go into a detailed
analysis. I am hesitatingly taking one drug, but am changing physicians
because I've lost confidence -- bluntly, I think I know pharmacology, at
least in the areas relevant to me, better than he does.

Getting to that level of knowledge, however, took many years of study,
which never stops. At some point, researching a drug's risks and
benefits calls either for your trusting other sources, or having a
significant scientific background -- emphatically including
biostatistics -- to be able to read the original papers and form your
own opinion.

I'll never, ever get to that point, my eyes glaze over after only a few
minutes of trying to wade through medical terminology. My only answer is
what I stated before, I would have to be facing death before I could be
convinced to take *any* medications again. Even if my doctor told me it
would vastly improve my quality of life, even if I were in even more
constant pain than I'm already in - that's how badly I was burned by the
Neurontin and Effexor withdrawals.

To specify... I was having cold sweats immediately followed by hot flashes
lasting just minutes and just minutes apart (as if someone where readjusting
the thermostat every 2 minutes from freezing to sweltering), tremors, visual
and auditory halucinations, physical buzzing that felt like electrical
shocks, buzzing in my ears, panic attacks, swelling in my arms and legs,
insomnia, nausea and vomiting, and uncontrollable weeping. I ended up in
the hospital ER, dehydrated to the point that it took 21 sticks before they
could find a vein in which to administer the saline, after 8 days of
continued vomiting and being unable to keep even a drop of water down. From
what I've read, the withdrawals I suffered were worse than the withdrawals
from heroine. So I'm sure you can understand why I am so mad about these
drugs being given to me.

I hate to disagree, but a doctor should know, without product-specific
warning, that abruptly stopping ANY anticonvulsant is dangerous. If you
look in the most common textbook of pharmacology, _Goodman & Gilman's
The Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics_, usually studied in the
second year of medical school, this is a basic warning for the class.

Let me clarify what I wrote before. My doctor *DID* tell me not to abruptly
stop the Neurontin. But he told me that after I had already been taking it
for over two years. He didn't tell me *before* I started taking it that it
could possibly be fatal to abruptly stop it. He also told me that I
shouldn't stop taking it at all. When I told him I couldn't afford it he
just looked at me and said, "Well, you *need* to take it." I honestly don't
think he could comprehend the fact that some people might not be able to
afford even something they *need*.

There would be less strong general caution in abruptly stopping a
serotonin/norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor like Effexor. I personally
know of people that have only been helped by Effexor, and others that
have had intolerable side effects.

Actually, from anecdotal reports of quite a number of other users of Effexor
on the 'net, the withdrawal effects from that are even worse than from the
Neurontin. I was withdrawing from both at the same time - plus Wellbutrin,
Cenestin (HRT), and Maxide.

snipped still more good information

I think a fair argument could be made that if you showed up at an
emergency room and explained you had had an anticonvulsant stopped
suddenly, you might be hospitalized on the spot under US law for
unstable emergency patients.

Actually, I told the doctors at the ER that I was suffering from withdrawals
from all of the above but they didn't think that's what was wrong with me.
They just diagnosed me as having a stomach virus (I don't know of *ANY*
stomach virus that lasts for 8 days and causes all the symptoms I listed
above), gave me a liter of fluids, and sent me home 6 hours later. To tell
the truth though, even if they had admitted that it was withdrawal from the
meds, I probably would not have let them put me back on them because I
thought that after 8 days I was over the worst of the withdrawals (I was
wrong, but I didn't know that then - the withdrawal symptoms lasted for more
than 3 months, sometimes coming over me just as bad as the first few days,
but they *did* lessen over time, and I'm glad now that it's over with).

more snippage

Unfortunately, the disease was too far advanced, when discovered, to be
able to start a main chemotherapy regimen in time to try to give him a
couple of good years.

I'm sorry to hear about Clifford. I'm glad that veterinary science is
advancing, but it's still too slow to help some of our dearest furkids.

Hugs,

CatNipped

On Mon, 27 Dec 2004, Jeanne Hedge wrote:

This entire discussion of Neurontin is disturbing to me as my dad's
been taking it for a while now (diabetic neuropathy in his legs). As
far as I can tell, he's not had any trouble with pain, loss of muscle
control, lost balance or falling due to his medication. To the
contrary, he's gotten better since he's been on it.


No medication is without side effects. My cat h0p was nearly dead and is
permanently liver damaged from the phenobarbital he'd been taking for his
seizures. He was prescribed gabapentin two years ago and underwent an
amazing improvement within days.


Dee