I have bookmarked your page and am printing off the pages to give to my sick friends. It is remarkable that you chose to post this information to the internet. My story is that I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia. I am a medical professional and have noted the exponential rise in autoimmune degenerative neurological conditions in the last 15 years.
The fibromyalgia predominantly strikes women and mine was triggered by the birth of my daughter and a surgery. I also used DayPro, but it was quite useless except to make me tired and go to sleep for the total fitful time of 4 hours per night. Since the symptoms are primarily neurological, I back-tracked histories of myself and several of my patients. We had all had surgery but not all had had general anesthetic and a neuro muscular blocker as I had. We all had used NutraSweet!!
I am a heavy user and have used about 2 liters of diet soda daily since the day the stuff hit the market. My symptoms: screaming leg pain mostly at bedtime. The most defining pain was the intra scapular tearing pain. There was one panic attack, heart palpitations nearly daily (no cardiac involvement, that was tested). Joint pain (no swelling and no articular deterioration), teeth grinding and nightmares, evening-time rashes, slowed speech and forgetfulness, depression and moodiness, vomiting and coughing in the morning and loss of about 80 percent of my strength.
Previously, I had worked out at a gym and could leg press over 800 pounds. That went down to less than 50 pounds. I couldn’t get back up from the floor without climbing up my own legs. There never were any headaches. I used Prozac for several months until I couldn’t sleep at all. I had physical therapy also at that time. The Prozac was great to get some neurotransmitter back in my muscles and the strength is about 60 percent better but the side effects were bad for me. It gave me strength to train in physical therapy. I have discontinued the Prozac due to side affected and the ever present stigma associated with the drug.
I’ve been off NutraSweet for about a week except that I had some gum 2 days ago that was laced with the stuff. Within the first 3 days the fog has really lifted and my toes are coming back, there’s pain where there was numbness. In order to walk some mornings, I had to soak my feet in super-hot water and then stick them on the frozen cement of the garage floor. This is called contrast therapy which shocked the feet so I could walk.
As a medical professional who can affect change, I vow to use my experience to help my patients recover their lives. I will write again to tell you of my progress.