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Hi. I had upper wisdom teeth extracted last week, got
a prescription for penicillin 500 mg, 3x a day (every
6 hours), 28 tablets. I went to Walgreen’s pharmacy to
get it filled and got Teva brand. I told the
pharmacist there “I have Celiac disease and have a
problem with soy and sulfa meds, can’t eat gluten,
does this have any of that in it?” He said, “No, it’s
fine, don’t worry about it, you’ll be fine with it”.
Famous last words, right.

I got diarrhea, and I got increasingly strange
symptoms, anxiety, sleeplessness, then sleepiness,
sort of a creepy crawly feeling all over me, just
feeling terrible, hard concentrating, etc. By day 7 of
these things (I was down to 4 tablets left to take)
I’m going “what is going on here, what does this have
in it?” So I called Teva and told them what was going
on and what my problems are and said, “Is it gluten?”
“No gluten” was the answer, “But it does have lactose
in it”. Aha. Very interesting. I have a problem with
milk that I know about, am not sure if it is the
casein protein thing I have read about, but I am
lactose intolerant for certain. The interesting thing
is if I take a lactase supplement it will help with
the diarrhea but I do get that same symptom range,
kind of dizzy feeling, sleep problems, creepy crawly
anxiety feeling all over, I just end up feeling so
awful that I can’t eat dairy even with the lactase
enzymes. Maybe an allergy to cow’s milk, the casein
thing, I don’t know.

I had the follow up dentist appointment yesterday and
they said “You are doing great! You’ll be fully back
to normal in about 6 weeks.” Needless to say I am not
finishing the last four of these tablets.

Anyway, just to let you know, if you get Teva
penicillin in tablet form, watch out if you have a
problem with dairy, because it has dairy in it.

Jerry

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