Prednisone

Predisone
I can't believe it! When I was talking about medication yesterday I forgot to include prednisone.  Oh, those fabulous steroids.  Prednisone is one of those drugs that you definitely can have a love-hate relationship with.  The treatment of choice for an  MS exacerbation is the steroid medications.  Steroids work by reducing inflammation and since MS symptoms are caused by multiple inflammations in the brain, they can be alleviated by reducing inflammation.  They really do work, and reduce the symptoms for a time, but they cause a lot of other crap to happen to you, too.
I know that there are very many people who have had steroid treatment for one reason or the other.  But the steroid treatment used for an exacerbation of MS is beyond any that most people will have to experience.
After my first exacerbation, the treatment was receiving an infusion of something called Solu Medrol.  I can't remember how long the treatment lasted by think it was maybe up to two or three weeks.  That would require going every day and sitting in a chair and getting about a boatload of that stuff. pumped into me!.  After you get the Solu Medrol, the prednisone treatment starts.  Steroids are one of those medications that you can't just quit cold turkey because it would really increase your chances of getting getting sick.  And I think even can shut the system down or something like that.  Anyway I know it's dangerous.  So most people have what is called a dose pack which would be something seven pills the first day six the second day and on down.  But for me the treatment was seven pills for the first two weeks and six for the next two weeks and on down.  This is a massive dose.
While prednisone is wonderful at reducing swelling it also creates multiple side effects.  For me it makes me want to eat everything and see, causes redness and swelling in my face or something called Cushing's syndrome.  It makes me horrendesly constipated and I can literally say I'm of crap because pretty much everything goes in and nothing comes out.  And it makes me crazed.  Sleep is terribly disrupted and I am as irritable as hell.
The first few times I had an exacerbation I would literally do a cost-benefit analysis of taking steroids.  On the one hand I would be able to walk.  On the other hand I would have no sleep, be constipated ,get really fat and look like a bloated monkey, and be a bitch on wheels as well.
My favorite steroid story is the time and I literally crashed my car into the side of my house.  I was near the end of the steroid treatment so hadn't slept in what felt like for days.  One of the people I was supervising at the time said that I was a little scary on steroids.  I was driving home after a very long day so was irritable in  general.  My house is on the corner.  The driveway is on the far side of the house so I usually swing a little wide going round the corner so I can pull into the driveway.  There are some young men living across the street who worked on cars on an off.  So there happened to be a huge van parked pretty close to the corner so I couldn't really see down the street.  When I did my wide swing after the stop sign and could see around the van I realized I was face to face with an oncoming car.  In my crazed state, I didn't think to stop and probably couldn't have stopped in time anyway. I just pulled really hard to the right which swung me up on the lawn and ended with me halfway through the living room wall.  I got out of the car and screamed "Oh, my "Oh my God, Oh my God!" at the top of my lungs.  I looked around and didn't see anyone so I screamed "OH MY GOD!" One more time.  By that time everyone was coming.  the neighbors the people from the next block people, from the next town... my husband came out of the house and saw it was me.  He later said he thought "what idiot hit my house?" One of our neighbors said  "whose house did you hit?" And I said " I'ts my own house.  I hit my own house".  He said "oh that's good".  When everyone had   seen what happened and slowly started to move away,  I could see the damage I'd actually done.  I hit the wall right between two rooms.  I really only pushed the wall in a bit, didn't really crashed through it.  I did push the coach a bit and since my son had been sitting on it, I was pretty freaked out,as was he.  I also moved a shelf full of knickknacks and nothing broke, just move the shelf about 5 inches.  It ripped the carpet in a corner, but almost nothing else got messed up.  I said to my husband that someone must've been looking out for me that nothing got broken and no one got hurt.  He said if someone was looking out for me I wouldn't have crashed into the house in the first-place.  He had a point.  Fortunately we knew a contractor who live close by and could come and prop up his ceiling so it wouldn't fall in.  He knew a guy who could come and do the brick worked as well.  The house was fixed by the end of the week.  My car was not totaled believe it or not , but it took about a month to get it back from the repair shop because they had to order a special part or something.  I was stuck driving a Dodge Neon for all that time.  Talk about adding insult to injury... . Fortunately, since being on the tysabri, I haven't had any exacerbation and my love-hate affair with steroids is over for now.
When my son was in daycare one of his teachers had Lupus and also had to be on very high doses of steroids.  She had some hallucinations, which is also a side effect of high doses, and one day she was putting the kids shoes into the refrigerator so they wouldn't spoil!  I also had something called drug-induced euphoria one time.  I felt terrible, I knew I felt terrible, but it was all okay.  Everything felt wonderful. I told my supervisor, Karen, that I must have done some really major psychological work because everything felt so great.  She didn't say anything as I think she knew that I was sort of out of my mind.
But if I had to be on prednisone again, I can survive all of the other side effects if I did have that euphoria back again!
So in conclusion, I hope that none of you have to experience the pain-in-the-ass of a prednisone treatment.  And I hope and pray that I will never have to experience it again either!
See you tomorrow.