When I first started Diamox I broke out in a rash and had to come off of it and WOW. Within 2 days I was feeling like crap again. My eyes felt like they were popping out of my head and those headaches behind my eyes returned. I was surprised at how soon my symptoms returned just from being off of it for 2 days! Little to say, I am back on it now! It has been a month with no allergic reaction so I think I am in the clear! Hopefully it will all level out for you!

Regarding going off: I think this has to be done slowly. My neuro is very conservative and was suggesting a half a pill a month. I think your body may need time to adjust.

As I wean off, (I am a teacher, too---lots of teachers have this and I am still trying to figure out why) I am drinking green tea, eating celery, and watermelon, as those are natural diuretics.

How fast does your neuro want you to come off? I want to at least have a medication-free August. July I am going to do a juice fast and hopefully kick start a good weight loss.

Haha funny about the teacher thing.. I am a senior in college getting my degree in elementary education~

I went from 1000mg to 750mg and felt bad for about the first 8-9 days. Bad pressure headache. But then for the last two days I felt good with no headache. Keeping my fingers crossed that maybe with each dose decrease there is just an adjustment period where your pressure decides to do a little acting up.

I started going off very slowly back in January. I was on 2000mg and went down to 1500mh. However, I took the sequels (capsules) and my neuro said that I could even open them up to take fractions of the pills to ween off really slowly.
The plan was to go as follows:
1500mg for two months
1000mg for two months
then re-evaluate and keep going down, one pill at a time, if I could handle it until I was off completely.
I noticed changes early on, but they were manageable. In week 3 my vision started to be affected, which got me worried and the HAs became more frequent. It was finally, week 4 when I called my doctor and said that I would have to go back to 4 pills (2000mg) until I saw him again because all of my symptoms were back with a vengeance including my vision getting all kinds of blurry.

I am trying to get off this damn drug for the same reason as you and I jumped on the opportunity at the end of December because I have been on medical leave from my teaching job this year. I am to see my neuro this month to see what happens next.

Don't lose hope. One of my doctors told me a couple of weeks ago, that it will work, it just takes time. I completely understand your desire to do it during summer break. I would go as long as you can as long as your eyes are not affected. The vision is the risk - so as long as that is safe, you can move forward!

Good luck!!

All the best,
Nicole :)

I've been weening since november of last year and am still not off! so, be patient, it takes a long time. I went from 1500mg (three pills a day) to now, taking it every 2 days. keep in mind, this took 8 monts. and it gets harder near the end. it got super hard when i had to go from once a day to every other. every time i go down in dosage, i get headaches. and, since weening, my migraines are worse. I try to combat this by avoiding migraine triggers and taking both coq10 and magnesium daily.

I recently had to go back up to once to twice a day this week. i think maybe the pressure in the atmosphere is really off or something. it's super depressing for me. it's hard when all you want is to be normal and have a child and this one medicine is standing in the way of that (along wtih the actual disease).

however, i never thought i'd make it to less than 3 pills a day, much less where I'm at now. Just keep going, and I wish you so much luck.

I got down to 2.5 pills and feel that my brain is "wet", so I went back up to three pills. I am disappointed, but I felt much better on three. I will see how that goes for a week. I really don't want to go to 4. Today, at work, I had the brain pressure feeling, took a half a pill and that went away. It came back when I got home, so I took my final dose for the day, 1.5.

On the good side: I lost 14lbs since going vegan and am glad to say that I hope this continues and rids me of this. I eat all organic food and all vegan food and it's so frustrating to have to be on this medicine. But, after feeling my head the last few days (I have not had this "wet brain" feeling in a long time), I have to be realistic and know that my body needs this right now.

Good luck to us all on this journey.