Mom, 33, Disabled After Antibiotic Causes Toxic 'Floxing' Reaction: 'Like a Bomb Had Gone Off in My Body' (Exclusive)

Hailey Sebert is raising awareness about fluoroquinolone toxicity — the rare and sometimes debilitating side effects from a certain class of antibiotics

Hailey Sebert and her two sons used to love taking advantage of the weather in their Long Beach, Calif., hometown.

“We'd ride roller skates, we'd go to the beach, we'd go to the boardwalk and just ride,” she tells PEOPLE exclusively of her boys, now 8 and 11. “We'd go play at the park for hours and just ride and run and play.”

At the time, Sebert worked at a therapeutic gym for for children — but one day, a child accidentally hit her head into Sebert’s jaw.

“It slammed my jaw shut and it cracked my tooth,” Sebert, 33, says. The tooth got infected and Sebert had to see a dentist.

She was given a prescription for the antibiotic levofloxacin in October 2021. After the first pill, Sebert had nightmares, which she chalked up to watching too many scary movies during the Halloween season.

After two days of taking the pills, Sebert notes, “I felt like a bomb had gone off in my body.”

“I just couldn't walk right. I couldn't walk normally. And by that evening, I was full on tremoring,” she explains. “I was just trembling from my legs all the way up on my body. And by the third day, I was using a cane for stability.”

Her condition deteriorated quickly. “Whenever I would try to walk, my whole back would be jerking and tremoring and my tendon pain in my heel was getting worse. It was starting to travel up my calf and into the back of my knee. It began to be very painful to stand. It felt like hot, searing pain.”

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She compared the pain to “when you're pulling a rubber band to its fullest capacity and you see it deteriorate before it snaps. That's how my tendon felt when I would I would be standing.”

“I degenerated within three weeks into a wheelchair," she says.

After an initial hospital visit led to no answers, Sebert starting doing her own research and learned about a condition called fluoroquinolone toxicity, or 'floxing,' the rare and serious side effects of a certain class of antibiotics. The antibiotic she had been given, levofloxacin, belonged to that class of drugs.

In 2016, the Food and Drug Administration issued a warning about the “disabling and potentially permanent side effects of the tendons, muscles, joints, nerves, and central nervous system that can occur together in the same patient” while taking the drugs.

Two years later, they issued a statement saying that due to the side effects, the agency “advises restricting fluoroquinolone antibiotic use for certain uncomplicated infections.”

In 2021, a National Institute of Health study said these antibiotics could have “adverse effects … include tendinopathy and tendon rupture, peripheral neuropathy and aortic aneurysm."

Sebert believes without a doubt that this is what happened to her. Currently there is no way to reverse the health effects of these antibiotics, and while some people may eventually regain their previous mobility, others remain impaired for the rest of their lives.

“Certainly, fluoroquinolones have toxicity,” Dr. Bruce Farber, Chief of Public Health and Epidemiology for Northwell Health, tells PEOPLE, before adding that they are also "amazing antibiotics and they've been around for over 30 years now.”

But, Farber notes, “cartilage issues” can be a problem. “[Fluoroquinolones] can cause Achilles tendonitis and tendonitis in other joints."

It is not known how many people may experience these side effects.

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Fluoroquinolones come with a black box warning, which highlights “a side effect that's serious, that is associated with this specific drug," Farber explains. "You need to think about [these side effects] before you prescribe it and make sure that the benefits really outweigh the risk.”

And a minor tooth infection wouldn't warrant such a drug, according to Farber. "It should be reserved for serious infections," he adds.

But Sebert says she was never warned about potential side effects, and more than two years later, she’s still dealing with the aftermath of taking two of the pills.

“I have weakness in my hands and I can't hold my phone up for very long,” she says. “I was hugging somebody yesterday and my arms got tired from hugging. The fatigue is so much.”

She started documenting her health journey on TikTok under the account @mercurialhails, hoping to spread awareness.

She soon learned that she was not the only one — many other people were saying their lives had been disrupted by floxing after taking antibiotics for everything from sinusitis to urinary tract infections.

“I felt like I needed to be seen,” Sebert says. “How this can be so heavily reported by the FDA, and yet when you go to seek help, you're not able to access it and nobody even really knows what's going on?"

After connecting with others online, Sebert started a website, WhattheFlox, to share resources with others who live with the “invisible pain” and disruption of fluoroquinolone toxicity.

Sebert clarifies that she isn't against antibiotics as a whole. "I know that these medications have a place," she says. "My advocacy is for informed consent," she says, sharing that many who've struggled with fluoroquinolone toxicity say they weren't told of the risks when they were prescribed the medication.

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Sebert says her current rheumatologist also believes she’s suffering the effects of fluoroquinolone toxicity. “I'm hoping that with physical therapy, I can just try and maintain some mobility and preserve whatever strength I have," she says. She also has a GoFundMe to help pay for her care.

There is “just a huge stark difference between running and playing at the park for hours, versus using a walker to get to one spot to just sit the whole time,” Sebert notes, sharing that she isn't able to push her children on swings anymore.

Although a friend stepped in to help at the playground swingset, "I want to do it," she tells PEOPLE, tearfully.

“I can't even say that I'd like to live my full life again because that feels so out of reach for me,” Sebert explains. “I want to live my life where my kids aren't asking me every day, ‘Mom, when you're not disabled anymore, can we do this?’ ”

“I want to be living my life with my kids,” she proclaims.

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