One evening my husband explained that he had been having slight pains in his chest when he walked up hills. He'd been to see the GP and had been sent to have tests at the hospital. The diagnosis was mild angina. He was prescribed three drugs, one to thin his blood, a beta blocker and statins.
After a few months - it's hard to say how many - my husband started to become anxious. He began to have periods of feeling nauseous. It came and went, but gradually it got worse. He wan't doing as much, he sat around. He wasn't himself. He worried, he fretted about his health He was becoming very quickly an old man, one who didn't want to do things but sit, read and sleep.
We were on holiday - an activity holiday. He'd reached a stage where he felt sick most of the time. We were grasping at anything - could it be a virus, could it be food poisoning? He almost stopped eating, taking just a little nourishment each day, but still he felt bad. He was miserable and I was miserable because I couldn't help feeling that this time it was for real. There was something terribly wrong with him and it was getting worse and I feared it was terminal.
At that point I took all the leaflets out of the pill boxes and checked them - could his problem be a side effect of something he was taking? But I didn't find any conclusive evidence there to suggest that his gradual malaise was drug-induced.
When we got home the GP was of course sympathetic and - yes, you've guessed - offered him further medication for his stomach problems. This was the GP who had prescribed the statins and who seemed unware of potential side effects.
Things came to a head when one evening my husband said he had a chest pain. A call to the NHS help line, intended to conjure reassurance, turned instead into a emergency. Two vehicles raced to our door; a cardiac paramedic and a full ambulance crew. After reassuring themselves that it was not a cardiac emergency my husband was admitted to the local hospital.
My daughter said to me, when she joined us in Accident & Emergency, "he looks yellow". I suppose in all the build up to this I hadn't really noticed the change but she was right - my husband was a strange colour, jaundiced it appeared. Not only did he feel ill, he looked ill too.
An overnight stay, various blood tests, tests in the cardiology department and some time later an endoscopy, must have resulted in a large bill for the National Health Service. The exact cause of his pain was never completely diagnosed but it seems it was probably due to more than one cause and the asprin - which he's been taking at completely the wrong time, on an empty stomach in the evening - cannot have helped.
I wasn't idle. I put "statins" together with "side effects" into Google and was horrified at what I found. We were not alone, far from it. There were other wives and partners talking about the state that their loved ones had found themselves in as a result of statins. There were testimonies from patients who had suffered as the results of statins. The more I delved the more I realised that my husband was suffering from statin poisoning - simple as that. An induced illness that was causing goodness knows what damage to his liver, his muscles and maybe even his heart too.
He's fine now, well as far as I can tell. I can only assume that no lasting physical damage has occurred as a result of the episode. It took about nine months for the effects to wear off, in much the same way that it was about nine months that led to the build up. I bought the book "The Great Cholesterol Con" - and I keep an eye on the growing list of International Network of Cholesterol Skeptics.
Of course friends who were as concerned as I was about my husband have heard the story, and they have warned their friends. Already I know of two other people who became ill because they were prescribed statins, and who made miraculous and sudden recoveries when the drug was ceased.
What concerns me - and that's the reason for my blog on the subject - is that I see no evidence that the tide is turning. We are still labouring under the illusion that statins are wonder drugs that should be given to everyone.
In my opinion they are not necessarily safe and in some cases positively dangerous. The idea that they should be given to people who are perfectly well is very worrying indeed.
