Comment from Chidichimo Brian

I have been seriously damaged by a simple course of cipro and my new life in retirement with my wife has been devastated. I retired from the FAA Sept 2025 and in May 2026 just 7 months into my retirement in Florida my life of bicycling and enjoying life has ended. A treatment for a UTI has begun as tendon pain (the one side effect the doctor told me could happen but would be mitigated if I just took it easy while in the drug (wrong!) it’s more than tendon damage it’s mitochondrial obliteration by a synthetic drug designed to destroy bacteria that mistakes human mitochondria as bacteria and is slowly eroding all cartilage in my body. It’s progresses to sever spinal disc degeneration (on top of that occurred naturally for a 63 year old man) and central nervous system damage that destroyed my ability to sleep. Body is stuck in fight or flight and won’t let the body sleep. This alone is making nights horrifying. It’s disrupted my entire digestive system and ability to eat common foods, diet is reduced to simple steed apples carrots and chicken. My muscles are atrophying away and skin sagging, collagen in eyes is creating massive floaters and vision chandes and the overall mitochondria damage has made my once active body exhausted just walking to take out the trash. 3 months ago I bicycling 10 -20 miles a day in Florida heat without an issues. My poor wife doesn’t understand what is happening and is in denial of what our future might be if I do not recover There is a severe shortage of medical professionals who can treat this disease and any that do are charging tens of thousands of dollars for unproven treatments that health insurance won’t cover. The irony of how health insurance covers the FQ antibiotic but won’t cover the serious damages caused by the pharmaceutical industry drug. We need the FDA and other government ageneode to fund research and treatment options for the thousands of FQAD victims this drug has approved. I stupidly took the pill believe it would be ok as millions take the drug with no side effects. After I started I read some is the warnings and didn’t truly understand the severity of the problem believing most side effects are reversible once stopping the drug Please take this serious and imagine yourself or family member losing their quality of life over a simple short course of antibiotics. Please help get funding for education of doctors, research on treatments and grants to help patient victims of FQAD