Prednisone High

These steroids (Prednisone) are freaking me out. I'm on 80 mg per day and they're making me take them early in the morning so I might eventually get some sleep sometime about 2 am the following morning.

Yeah, they're strong.

The difference between Dexamethasone and Prednisone is a matter of crudeness. The Dex is pretty crude, the Pred is pretty smooth. Dex puts an edge on everything. Pred has rounded edges everywhere. Pred also doesn't seem to cause the anger management issues that Dex does. Mental control might be Pred's biggest strength.

But the physical effect is ultimately the same. Irritation of the esophagus. Difficulty eating because of the irritation. Severe heartburn 24/7 with no medical relief allowed (some pills require an acid environment to work, so I can't take any of the modern antacids).

There is also a loss/lack of sleep. A tendency for my brain to want to run my body harder and longer than it should. Suddenly I find myself completely spent and my brain still says "wassa matta, wimp?"

I won't even talk about the physical changes steroids continue to make to my body.

The only thing I'm really worried about is what the downslope of this roller coaster ride will be like. They're leaving me on this 80 mg regimen for 10 days. I have no idea how (or if) they intend to taper me off this junk. If they don't taper, I'll wanna DIE for about 5 days. The crash will be horrible.

Anyway, we're gonna do some socializing over the next couple of days. We're gonna do dinner and/or drinks (don't tell anyone) with our "girlfriends" Pam and Suzie, and then we'll do lunch or dinner with our two "adoptive nephews" Christian and Ethan and their parents Chat and Jose on the 1st. (It's actually Christian's Bday on the 31st and there's a party, but the infectious load at such a gathering might not be good for me. Remember, I have no immunity to childhood diseases any more.)

Oh, and as a side note to the "no immunity" thing, there's a very strong rumor running around that I probably won't have any allergies either. It's even been suggested that I could try to use some drugs that have previously caused anaphylaxis (a potentially deadly allergic reaction). Obviously these experiments would need to be taken under controlled circumstances, but it would be interesting to see what happens. After all, one of my deadly drug allergies is to aspirin and to a lesser degree, all its derivatives (all the way down to NutraSweet which actually only causes a sinus flare-up).

If that turns out to be an interesting and desirable side-effect, I still wouldn't recommend this particular curative process for allergic people. The treatment is far worse than seasonal effects or food sensitivities. "We can cure your allergies, but we have to almost kill you a couple of times for it to work." That doesn't really sound like a good marketing program to me.