My patient, a rugged sixty year old with massively muscular forearms, gray chest hair at the V of his denim shirt, and a voice that suggested years of liquor and unfiltered cigarettes, lowered his voice and leaned forward.
“I’m not usually scared of anything, but for three nights now, ever since I started taking the Levaquin for this pneumonia, I have had the most horrific nightmares. I can’t even talk about them, that’s how terrifying they are. I have never been so scared in my life. You’ve got to get me on a different antibiotic, or I would rather let the pneumonia run its course.”
I had never heard of such a side effect from this commonly used broad-spectrum antibiotic, but a quick search on my iPhone yielded a long list of references to this phenomenon.
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