[rbwalton]

About the same time I had an attack of Neuralgic Amyotrophy, I developed increased eye pressure. Everyone says the two are not related. That may be true.

I was given Timolol for the eye pressure. I never thought another thing about it. Time passed, and I started to develop a tremor. No one saw it at first. They probably thought I was nuts. I finally got bad enough that I got a doctor to see it. He sent me to a neurologist. I told the neurologist about my eye medication first thing. He ended up prescribing Propranolol. Both of these are beta-blockers. I asked a direct question- Can the two be taken simultaneously without any trouble. He said there would not be any problem. . . He ordered $5000.00 in tests. Luckily I had insurance that paid it all. Not lucky for those who have to pay higher premiums when stuff like this happens though. The tests found nothing.

I decided on my own to stop the Propranolol. It was not working noticeably differently for a small dose versus no dose at all. It is probably a good thing I stopped it since I now see that taking the two at the same time is not necessarily a good idea. The effects can be additive. More is not really better with beta-blockers. The tremor went on.

My eyes felt worse all the time. They were scratchy; they stung and teared-up excessively. They got tired too easily. I finally decided to switch eye doctors to see what someone else thought about this.

When he saw I was using Timolol and asked if I had any tremor or exercise intolerance, or any depression. “Why, yes I do”. To make this shorter, it turned out that Timolol has many side effects that I had not been warned about. And evidently these side effects are not known by the doctors I have been seeing anyway.

I have now been off of it for a few days. It can take three weeks for it to totally get out of your system, but I have already noticed improvements. The tremor is less than before. I have fewer twitches and they are much weaker. That persistent headache I have had has not returned since.

Watch out for side effects. Doctors do not. And if you do not have insurance like I did at the time, it could get expensive.