Wednesday, August 5, 2009

The Blessings of Prednisone

I never thought I'd say this, but I'm so happy to be on Prednisone.

It's just a bizarre thing to be saying/writing, because my Prednisone experiences early in my mystery illness were so negative; primarily, it made me crazy and didn't seem to do anything for my symptoms.

But this time around, it's helped big time with my joint pain and hasn't seemed to affect my moods. All good news.

And I'm convinced that although I overdid things with the cousins visiting and flared up by the end of their visit, that without the Prednisone, I wouldn't have been able to do half as much as I did with them without ending up bedridden.

Are there downsides to the Prednisone? You bet. I'm covered in bruises, most of which I have no idea how I received. And I'm fairly sure that the Prednisone is irritating my notoriously sensitive stomach even though I'm careful to only take it with food.

But the improvement in my joint pain more than outweighs the downsides. For a few weeks, I was pretty darn close to pain free. I'm flared now, sure, and the joint pain has returned, but I'm convinced it would be way more intense if it weren't for the Prednisone keeping the inflammation down.

1 comment:

Lisa said...

I'm so glad the prednisone helped. I'm not sure how I really feel about prednisone. Some times it seems to help me and other times, not so much. Just another confusing part of living with chronic illness, I guess! Like we need more confusion!!