I have made a serious promise to myself: never again will I take a prescription medication without researching it.

Case in point: I was prescribed 12 mg of hydrochlorothiazide per day for high blood pressure. It's an old medication, sulfa family. And the prescribed amount was half of the normal dosage.

What the doctor didn't tell me, and I didn't read about, was that you must NEVER take a potassium supplement with it, because it assists potassium levels in the body anyway, and with an additional supplementation, you run the risk of potassium poisoning, which can be fatal, my friends.

I started having fluttery feelings in my chest, deep muscle pains (to the point where you'd make it 8 on a scale of 1 to 10), I was confused and dizzy (not the time to joke about my personality, thanks) and so weak I could hardly walk from the car into the house. Let me tell you, I was scared. I think the scariest part, aside from the heart reaction, was that I stopped urinating. Say what?? This stuff is a duretic, for heaven's sake!

I stopped taking it. 24 hours later I was feeling better and 48 hours later (today) I'm back to normal. What an idiot I was not to check out the fact sheet. I could have died, from sheer ignorance.

Never again will I take medicine I haven't researched. Thanks to Sue, who pointed me to www.drugs.com.