Lynn, glad you had a good response to Diamox.
However, what you describe in dosage is no longer recommended by physicians who work in this field. While the dosage you recommend works, a very significant proportion of people have side effects that are intelerable, and I've personally seen a number of people who had to abandon their hike, or not even start, because they were made to feel so lousy from the high Diamox dosage.
There have been a number of medical websites that are devoted to very high altitude climbing, that reflect the newer, lower dosages.
Thankfully, there seems to be little or no reduction in protection from the lower dosage.
It is important to remember that the higher dosing was NOT created on the basis of drug testing like we do these days....it was found that the drug worked, and they simply transferred the dosing used for glaucoma (the drug is hardly used for that, anymore), which DOES require higher dosages.
As a generic drug, and the relatively few people who need this drug, there will never be a large scale study of dosing, we are dependent upon those specialists in high altitude medicine who work in the field to do small scale testing to guide us.
Hope that makes sense.
For the novice reader, both Harvey and I are licensed physicians who have published articles on the subject of altitude illnesses.
