…when I finally complete nine months of slowly coming off a very high, prolonged dosage of prednisone, which was prescribed to beat down sarcoidosis, which was diagnosed back in 2001 and decided to come out of remission and kick the mother-trucking shit out of my kidneys last summer:
- Feeling completely and utterly exhausted nearly all the time, contrasted with…
- … bursts of manic energy that seemingly came out of nowhere, most often in the middle of the night, resulting in hour upon hour doing something completely ridiculous like organizing my CD collection based on genre, in alphabetical order by composer, by the colour of the spine, etc.
- Dealing with the jaunty show tune called “systemic fat redistribution”, where all of the fat from all over my body decide to migrate to and hold some kind of lipids-only Burning Man in my stomach region
- Massive, uncontrollable mood swings that would last for hours, which would find me one moment sitting at my desk feeling like I just swallowed a dozen “I’m so freaking happy” pills, the next hiding in a washroom stall bawling my eyes out for absolutely no reason whatsoever, the next utterly depressed and despondent, then OMG I’M SO HAPPY again, etc.
- Prolonged, intense crankiness and anger, probably caused in part by the above and by insomnia that would last for days
- Not feeling in control of myself whatsoever, and isolating myself from others to avoid unleashing a mood on an innocent bystander
- Being on a sodium-free, fat-free, seemingly flavour-free diet to stave off prednisone’s legendary ability to cause shocking weight gain (successful, thank jersey)
- Gut issues. The less said, the better.
- A skin complexion that looked like I had been dropped in a deep fryer filled with five-week old lard
- Countless visits to multiple doctors, tests out the wazoo (thankfully not IN the wazoo), enduring the WTF experience of being dipped into an MRI machine and massive complications from a seemingly botched biopsy, etc.
- Subjecting my family to all of the above
Things that this experience makes me thankful for:
- Getting sick finally got me off my ass and exercising (again, to try and prevent major weight gain)
- Learning to eat healthy, and actually starting to enjoy aspects of the ascetic diet
- Having the love and seemingly endless patience of a damn fine woman who was on the receiving end of much of the crankiness and mood swings and frothing at the mouth
- For the most part avoiding most of the worst side effects of prednisone (especially the weight gain, and the infamous moon face, cf. Jerry Lewis)
It’s been a rough nine months, but so far (crosses fingers, toes, antenna) it looks like my sarcoidosis is in remission again, which is probably the thing I’m the most thankful for at the moment. The crankiness and moodiness is starting to (finally) abate, and I’m slowly starting to feel like myself again. More importantly, I’m starting to feel like I’m in control of myself again, both physically and emotionally, which feels like, no shit, a kind of freedom.
I look forward to eating potato chips again, socializing with other human beings like a regular, non-sociopathic person does, and treating my family to extended periods of me being happy.
