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I don't know if you're familiar with Jamie Fox's song, "Blame it on the Alcohol" but it's the refrain to that song from which I take the title of this blog post. Now, I do not condone over-indulgence in alcohol, but in my strange sense of humor, this title popped into my head one day and it made me laugh - a valuable commodity these days.
So, just what am I blaming on Prednisone? Well...so many things! But I will only mention a few and to start, this:
See it? See THEM? Don't look at me like that! You know exactly what I'm talking about!
My newly formed chipmunk cheeks and the Hunchback of Notre Dame's hump I've got going on. Where did they come from? Those lovely additions would be the result of my being on Prednisone, a steroid, for 3 years.
Here's briefly how that came about:
I was sitting on the examination table in front of my rheumatologist after a painful routine examination. She would press on all of my tender joints, and other painful points, to the point where I wanted to kick that woman! However, my Christian principles always prevented me from indulging in that potentially satisfying reaction.
She was about to write me a prescription for a biologic to go along with the Methotrexate I was already taking, in an effort to reduce the level of inflammation in my body, when I informed her that this would be my last visit.
When she asked that very same question yet again, I finally caught on that this was apparently a rhetorical question. I can be slow sometimes.
So she crumpled up the sheet on the prescription pad that she was writing on and started writing a new prescription.
"I didn't want to start you on this just yet. You're young to be getting started on steroids but it's effective and cheap."
And my journey with Steroids began!
Well, sort of, but not really. She actually prescribed Prednisone for me the year before, on a trial basis, to see how I would respond to it, and boy did I respond! I felt so much better after the first few doses that I called up my boss/friend and told her I was coming back to work! My legs no longer felt as if I were dragging extremely obese children from each limb and I could walk with my head held high on shoulders pushed back - a stance I hadn't been able to attain in months! I loved Prednisone!
After 2 weeks, the trial was over and my rheumatologist had the information that she needed. My body responded positively to steroids. Instead of prescribing me more, she increased the dosages of my anti-inflammatory medications.
Blast! I wanted Prednisone! Little did I know what I was asking for.
Prednisones side effects are nothing to sneeze at! If you take a glance at the long list of things that it can do to you body, you'd no doubt wonder why it's prescribed even at all! As one of my mother's rheumatologists told her many years ago, "There's nothing else out there like it."
You see, Prednisone squashes your immune system in such a way that when my Lupus is flaring, to simply take 2.5 milligrams more reduces swelling and gives me blessed pain relief. At the same time, if I remain at too high of a level for too long I increase my chances of something bad happening.
So far, I have exhibited the following things that I blame on the Pr-eh-eh-eh-eh-ednisone:
1. Heightend Aggression. I don't back down easily in a discussion, heated debate or argument anymore. It's like my cut-off switch has been disabled and the fail-safe mechanism that would signal to me that it's time
