A few days into the prescription she says, "I started having issues with my legs-- my legs hurt, they burn, felt like I walked up hill all day, my feet hurt, I had problems with my eyes, my vision started becoming kind of blurred."
It took three months and four doctors to come up with a diagnosis.
Dr. Ki Jung, Adrienne's neurologist, says the Levaquin caused tendinopathy and peripheral neuropathy. He says he helped rule other things out and worked on a timeline to figure out what happened.
Jung says, "I told Adrienne, let's put a timeline to this and see where we are and then see if we can tease out any correlations; that's really where we were able to get to the notion that this was a Levaquin problem."
"So basically the drug attacked her nerves and tendons?"
"Correct, in terms of a side effect profile."
Adrienne was shocked.
"He said unfortunately you have nerve damage from taking Levaquin."
Dr. Charles Bennett chairs a drug watchdog agency at the University of South Carolina.
He was not at all surprised to hear Adrienne's story.
"I'm not surprised. I've been working on this for years. This woman is a story that's replicated in city after city, case after case."
He recently petitioned the FDA for new, what's called black box warnings for Levaquin, those are bold warnings meant to grab your attention. The FDA already required black box warnings in 2008, warning of possible tendon rupture and muscle weakness. And in 2013 the FDA required a label change warning of nerve damage.
