Gary on steroids

Gary started a course of steroids to battle to his drywall/tomato/drug allergy.

I have been on high doses of steroid pills twice: both times to titrate down off MS IV steroids. I started at 10 pills. Gary is starting at six, which is double the normal dose that people get for, say, poison ivy.

High doses of steroids lead to irritability. Gary is already irritable because he is covered in boils like Job. And while I am a stoic patient, he is the crankiest patient imaginable. So his base layer of irritability will now be frosted with a spite ganache. I am not looking forward to this.

I have warned him that not only will he be more irritable than normal, he will be hungry. 

“Remember when I ate a dozen donuts on the drive home from the hospital?” I said.

“That won’t happen to me. My migraine medicine kills my appetite.” 

Not only will he be hungry, he will be loopy.

I said, “Remember that day at 2 a.m. when I decided all the light bulbs needed to be synchronized so I switched out every light bulb in the house thinking they would all die off someday at the same time?” 

“That’s stupid. It’s how often you switch the light on that makes it go out. “

I said, “Remember when I bought the twenty light bulbs at Walmart at two a.m.? Remember what it cost? Money will mean nothing to you. Even Mom’s microdose of steroids in Albuterol made her buy $800 worth of knives.“

“I won't do that.”

“You would do that right now, today, even without the steroids.”

So this is my self-preservation plan. If he gets cranky, I will run to work. I will proactively buy multiple three-pound bags of baby carrots to exhaust his jaws. I will sign in to Amazon and monitor what goes in the cart and if it’s something like $6,500 worth of dressage gear I will cancel that order.

I think the first thing that will make him cranky is that he doesn't get to be the expert on steroids yet. I still know more about it than he does. He hates that.

=======UPDATE 

Well, that was fast. Not even two hours after taking the first dose, he said he wanted cookies AND DO NOT MAKE THEM I DON’T CARE IF YOURS ARE BETTER JUST GRUBHUB THEM NOW. So fifty dollars later we are getting a dozen cookies because he snapped at me.

=======ANOTHER UPDATE

As cookies were being placed on the porch by the GrubHub courier, CANCEL THE COOKIES I DO NOT WANT COOKIES. Loopy.

Comments

[KC]

Oh sigh...

(may you - and your finances - both survive this!)

[TheQueen]

KC - tomorrow is the first delta day, the day he reduces the steroids. Those are the worst days. We will see,

[KC]

I hope the results of the experiment turn out to be better than expected but also yes, steroids, grumpy, etc.

[theQueen]

KC - so far he hasn't come out of his room. Who even knows what he's up to.

[KC]

As long as the financially-injudicious or blackmail-providing activities over the internet are within bounds (... okay, also as long as he doesn't pick *too* much of his skin off), that's probably for the best in general!

(I have personally never done one of those graduated step-down rounds of steroids, but at this point I have kind of a lot of friends with autoimmune conditions who have needed to do them and... yeah. They sound... not fun... for both the person and the people living with the person, for the most part!) (except for the "my house has never been so clean" occasional advantages of the kinda-manic starting phase, for some individuals who otherwise have chronic fatigue, but that is proooobably not an outcome Gary is experiencing?)

[theQueen]

KC - he has scratched off so much skin that he bought a new vacuum to deal with just his skin. Vacuum number six.