Nursery Rhymes and Shakespeare Oh My!

Do you remember that old nursery rhyme about an old woman who swallowed a fly?  She swallowed a spider to capture the fly, then swallowed some more crap, rather then just spit the spider out!  I mean what was she doing to swallow a spider to begin with?  Was it a dare at the retirement home? Yeah, well I never got it either as a kid. What I do know is that there are medications out there, that for whatever ghastly reason we must take in order to get better, but no one focuses on the side effects.

Recently I became a raging loon. I can say that now because I know who I am, I am well aware of my faults. I am outspoken, loud and brash. I prefer to think of them as qualities to my endearing personality. Until last week! 

Before I continue, I must first apologize to my patient husband, who was made a victim to my recent lunacy, and my teenage daughter. Somehow the little one escaped the complete insanity, most likely because at four years of age she is on her own crazy trajectory, little people are not sane. This period of time found us becoming buddies, as I her mother, slowly disappeared into a crazed monster. 

I had to undergo a treatment of IV Cortical Steroids. Now let me expand on this for you to completely understand. I had an IV with steroids being pumped into me for three days.  The "benefit" of this was to bring down the swelling on my nerves, so that I could function once more. This is not the first time that I have had to undergo this course of care, but it is the first time that I am going to write and tell the tale of me and steroids. Frankly, I normally stay in the hospital for the week when undergoing this treatment because I am in need of physical therapy as well. Not this time, and someone should have warned my husband what fate awaited him.

I have heard the typical warnings of steroids, like most of you, the rages, acne, burst of strength. What I had been clueless too were how these are coupled at once when given a dose via the IV. Steroids do not effect everyone the same way, but the vast majority of people on them do suffer. What they should do is warn the family members that shortly after beginning the course a monster may be unleashed in their midst and to take cover. 

I will begin to describe how after the first half hour of the IV, everything that I drank, including water tasted like metal. Not that I have made a habit in my life to consume chrome, but I imagine that if I were to start, this is what it would taste like.  This was merely the beginning...

It is hard to find the words to explain the hunger that overcame me next. Only complicated by that "everything tastes like metal thing" going on in my mouth, I wanted FOOD! Evidently, when on steroids not all foods are what you crave, this would be too simple. I craved salty foods, which compounds the other side effect of water retention. Now does any of this sound like fun to you?  Regardless, I ate, limiting what I took in, because my hunger is scaring me a bit, and what is more I am getting scared that the metal taste is now becoming acceptable and a little palpable.

Would it be too much to ask that this be the end? Of course, because that was within the first hour, we have a few more days to go here.  Let's get to psycho. Psycho would be the mental deterioration that my mind begins to go into after I am done with the first course. Psycho is the woman that cried at commercials and wept at the story of a puppy that wound up in a cactus. I am not given to outbursts of emotions, but I was going from happy, nay mania, to depression to absolute anger over the most banal things. At one point my mind dare allowed itself to day dream getting into a fight with Iron Mike Tyson! Asides from arrogance to think I had a chance with anyone, what kind of crazy does a person have to be to even envision fighting Mike Tyson?! I dread the idea to further explore that thought process.

Alas, if it were only a tale of being an emotional roller coaster, there are more side effects yet to be explored. One thing my body seems to want me to do is find all its got to give when it came to side effects. Next came the freezing sensation. Freezing is an understatement, to more accurately describe this feeling would require you to take two poles of dry ice and insert them where your leg bones are. Freezing would have been a welcomed friend compared to this! When this sensation finally decides to leave another side effect pops up for good measure. 

The hits just keep coming. I am now going into the next phase, and for me this means acid reflux, heartburn and other pleasantries. My stomach acted as though I went on some acid ingestion bender and it was determined to teach me a lesson. How attractive am I at this point, with belching now being done by me, as if it were an event in the Summer Games this year in London and I was in training.

All of this is only met with the lack of sleep. Remember that line from Shakespeare in Hamlet's soliloquy; "To sleep, perchance to Dream; Ay, there's the rub, For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come"; well I suspect that the young Dane prince was coming off of steroids. I am still going without sleep a week later. This can be great if you are in need of studying for college finals, or finishing a project for work, but when your only job is to get bed-rest to get better, insomnia is not the most effective side effect.

So, to conclude, I had been reduced to tears, fits of rage (with the added bit of delusion; see Mike Tyson), feeling so cold I burned, following an insatiable need to eat massive quantities of food, followed by heartburn so bad I hated myself, and bursts of energy and the inability to close my eyes to sleep for one moment. Yes, I know about side effects, and I suffer from them, and I am not alone. This is what I have to go through to get better, sadder than that, it is what my family has to deal with in the wake of my steroids.
Just think, this blog entry was  based on only day one! 

To leave you without a quote would be so unlike me, so here it goes;

"Healing may not be so much about getting better, as about letting go of everything that isn't you - all of the expectations, all of the beliefs - and becoming who you are." - Rachel Naomi Remen

"You can set yourself up to be sick, or you can choose to stay well."~ Wayne Dyer