I have taken cipro (and other antibiotics in rotation) continuously for over 20 years.  The most important thing you can do is rotating off cipro and on to another antibiotic periodically.  I haven't had any long term side effects or issues, but if the drug is not used properly and rotated, then you can have issues with it and/or it can lose its effectiveness.

Cipro and flagyl work well in tandem because they are from different antibiotic families and work on different bacteria. Cipro should never be rotated directly to levacquin which is from the same fluoroquilone antibiotic family.  I generally favor xifaxin after a cipro rotation because cipro is broad spectrum antibiotic which kills many bacteria while xifaxin is not systemically absorbed and allows skin and other bacteria to regenerate.  This will protect your body from opportunistic yeast and fungal infections that could otherwise develop from taking cipro at too high a dosage or for too long a period of time.

By the way I have no thyroid gland due to thyroid cancer and take 175 mcg synthroid and there is no problem there.  The only issue with diabetes is that some of the symptoms of diabetes (numbness and tingling in the extremities) mimic some reported possible cipro side effects.  If you experience this you will not know which is causing it unless you stop the cipro.

I've been on Cipro more or less continuously since 2009, with no significant side effects. It has enabled me to thrive with an active and essentially normal life. While it's preferable to rotate antibiotics every 2-3 weeks, and I'd encourage you to work with your doctor to explore that option, I'm here to point out that you can be just fine even if that doesn't turn out to be satisfactory for you and you need to stay on just Cipro. None of the other antibiotics individually worked for me. Eventually Cipro alone did lose its effectiveness, but adding Flagyl about 18 months ago worked great, even though Flagyl alone never worked.

My experiments proved to me that in my case taking the medication once daily worked just as well as splitting the dose. This was a big help, since Cipro needs to be spaced away from dairy and vitamins by a few hours. I also slowly reduced the dose (in collaboration with my doctor) to find the lowest effective dose for me.

Good luck!

My only prolonged cipro treatment was for 1yr between 1999 and 2000.

Biggest side effect? My ligaments became fragile, breakable?, swollen, painful etc...I started to get tendonitis all over the palce.

Don't remember any other specific ones.

Sharon

Thank you to Scott, Sharon and CTBarrister for answering my message.  You have given me more insight to this problem. I am going to try cutting back on the Cipro to one a day and see how that works. If It helps, I will speak to my doctor to try different dosages to see if the lowest one continues to work. Thank you again for your input on this matter.  I will keep posting on my progress. Take care all.....I am so glad I came across J Pouch Group........... it has made me feel less alone with my problem. 

Gypsy/Joan