Hi, I'm new to this list. <> I am thinking about going on Byetta butt...I have two concerns: 1) Has anyone had any bad side effects (I've read a lot of the entries, I gather nausea, stomach upset, and burning are normal) over the long haul of using Byetta. <>>I work in a law office that handles a lot of pharmaceutical liability cases. I know way too much about side effects that aren't mentioned in by the manufacturers of drugs. Had a personal experience with Lipitor <<>> and all statins so I don't use any of those (my doctor is a bit upset about it, but I'm using vitamins and minerals to control cholestral). Anyway, before I get off my Avandemet which has done wonders to keep my sugar down, I am looking around the internet to see if anyone has had some truly bad experiences with Byetta that the mfg hasn't included in their literature.<<>> 2) After you lose the weight you need, do you go off Byetta or stay on it? <<>>>> Does your weight lose level out and/or does your diabetes no longer have to be controlled with medication because your weight is down. <<<<>> Ciao, Greg

Good luck with the Byetta. My morning fasting sugars weren't too bad, up in the 150's and 160's, so the Byetta really worked for me. Now my morning sugars are like 109, 112 up to the 120's if I had any starch the night before. (Yo, what I wouldn't give for a big, steaming plate of linguini with clam sauce, with garlic bread on the side). But even if your doc is right and your sugars are too high for the Byetta to do any good, remember, it cuts your appetite. I eat about 1/4 of what I used to eat. So you will probably lose weight, which will help overcome the diabetes. I sure hope this does it for you. Don't get discouraged if you get the nausea, it will pass after the first month or so. I hope it helps you to lose weight like it did for me, that will help bring your sugars down. Stick with it!

Ashley has put up a great web site about weight loss with Byetta. Very cool. Good job, Ashley. I'm still losing, but all I have for breakfast and lunch is Glucerna, and sometimes a piece of fruit. I hate that, I really like to eat. I'm hoping with the Byetta, after I lose the weight I need to lose, I'll be able to go back to eating a small breakfast and lunch without the weight coming back like other times I've tried to diet. When I was eating breakfast and lunch I wasn't losing weight even though the Byetta cut my intake to about 1/4 of what I used to eat. Good old INSULIN RESISTANCE, it's what makes Type II Diabetes so much fun!
Ciao!
Greg

Well here it is in the 4th month, and I've kind of stabilized. I'm not losing weight any more, but at least my blood pressure is still normal. Yay! My sugar was creeping up while I was undergoing the stress of selling my business, then when that was over it went down again, as predicted. But now it's creeping up a little again. I think I know why, I'm eating too much. Before Byetta, I would have Glucerna for breakfast and lunch, then eat a normal dinner, but with the diabetes I was still gaining weight. Then with Byetta, I started losing weight, so I started eating breakfast again. That's my mistake, I'm sure. So it's back to Glucerna for breakfast and lunch. I'll let you guys know how this works out. Anyone else have a similar experience? Oh, one more thing, I had a couple in incidents of forgetting to take my dose before sitting down to dinner. That's because I'm the cook in the family, so I'd be preparing dinner and planning to take the dose before sitting down to eat .... then forgetting and just going ahead with eating because of being involved with the cooking and serving. I know, I know, that's just plain stupid, but hey, I never told you guys I was a card-carrying member of Mensa. In fact, I'm chairman of my local Densa chapter. But the point is, my dear wife, bless her sweet soul, went to the ceramics place where you paint figurines and then they glaze them for you, and made two little lizard figurines painted up like Gila monsters. One sits on the kitchen table and the other sits on the counter top where I prepare the food, so I never forget a dose now. I advise anyone who is forgetful like me to try this visual reminder technique. If you're not into painting ceramics, I'm sure a rubber lizard from the toy store would work just as well. That's the news from Tampa, Friday, January 13. It's 80 degrees here in January. How lucky is this? :-o) Ciao, Greg

Hope everybody had a great Thanksgiving. Mine was very nice and I enjoyed everything, including the desserts made with sugar which I used to avoid, even though the lizard spit caused me to eat only a tiny fraction of my usual sasquatch-sized portions.

Welcome to mgr. Keep the faith, you'll have some bad days but ultimately your body will get used to it and the nausea will disappear. Then it might come back. Fair warning! I'm in my third month. The nausea had disappeared about the middle of the second month, but it came back for one day last week. But now it's gone again, so don't let something like this stop you. I get occasional heartburn or what we used to call it when I lived back in Joisey "agita". Alka Mints antacid takes care of that. Also get some headache now and then. Glass of red wine takes care of that. But with blood sugar and blood pressure finally gone to textbook normal readings, and my weight starting to drop, I'll put up with these occasional symptoms any time! At age 57, 6 ft tall I was 280 lbs and in trouble with poorly controlled hypertension and slowly climbing sugars even though I was on the maximum allowed doses of Zestril, Norvasc, Toprol XL, Avapro and daily aspirin. Plus Glucophage for the diabetes and Zocor for the cholesterol. I was a walking drug strore. With the Byetta, my sugar is normal and my BP dropped to below normal so they cut my Norvasc and Toprol in half and the BP went up to normal. I'm down to 270 lbs and dropping. You can't beat that with a stick! With Type 2 diabetes at epidemic proportions worldwide and Byetta so effective at controlling it, I predict Amylin stock will skyrocket so I bought a block of it.

This morning I had a sharp burning sensation at the injection site. It didn't last long, just a few seconds. I read that this can happen and it's nothing to worry about. If it happens to you they say next time let the lizard spit warm up outside of the fridge for about 10 minutes before injecting and it shouldn't happen again. I'll let you guys know if this works for me.

Sorry I haven't posted in a while, but my wife and I are busy with selling off a major portion of our business. We'd like to scale back and take it a little easy for a change. We just found a buyer now, at the worst possible time for those employees who will be let go due to the sale. We're pretty tore up about this facet of it, but for a number of reasons beyond our control, now is the time to sell, do or die. We'll be giving them as big a severance package as we can afford, and help them find other jobs as much as we can, but this still sucks big time. These people have become like family to us over the years. Well, as the saying goes, "Life sucks, then you die."

I may not post again till after Christmas, so Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah and Happy New Year to one and all. May the lizard be with you and accompany you to good health!
Ciao, bambinos!