Thursday 1 July 2010

Prednisolone burst.

*grumbles*

I hate pred. Don't get me wrong, I love that it does it's job. But I hate the side effects, like the insomnia (which I already have, so added with a 5 day pred increase to 30mg- which isn't the end of the world, but is higher than my maintenance 10mg- I'm probably gonna be a sleepless zombie for a few days) plus the potential threat of being all hamster cheeked (which I did when I was 11/12 and will gladly never go through again if I had the option) and the part where I'm ravenously hungry all. the. damn. time. Thats a good thing too. But 3am munchies get annoying. Especially when you're me and you can't be arsed with the effort of actually finding food. Or even worse, if you've already eaten everything the day before and basically theres nothing left short of having a midnight mish to Tesco.

So, why the increase? My lungs are bastards to me. I woke up on Wed morning at stupid o clock with major pain in the top of my right lung whenever I breathed or coughed. After what felt like forever I managed to fall back to sleep (continuing my impressive subconscious determination to refuse to get out of bed before 12 these days) but the pain stayed all day. I'm used to it, in a way. Since last year's pleurisy debacle, I rarely go long without the lungulars kicking up a fuss. But most of the time I can just keep going on, and sort of ignore it. Not on the cards this time, it seems. I tried basic ibuprofen which did jack all, so I didn't bother continually drugging myself up if it wasn't going to work. I'm betting the ridiculous heat can't be helping matters though.

I thought that when I woke up today that I'd be fine; the pain started to dull as Weds went on, so I figured that I'd be fine, or at least, a bit better by today. Then I got my stupid wake up call in the shape of my lungs again. I caved and went for the co-codamol (b/c there's nothing stronger in this house. If there was, I would have gone for that instead) hoping that this would solve it. Well, in a way, it did work.

For 10 minutes.

Then came back all the stupid ouch-y ness and I can bearly cough b/c of how much it hurts, which means my lungs feel gross. My dad phoned up the hosp, and they said to come in for an x-ray. I didn't see my normal dr, I saw a different one who I've never seen before but he was good (and younger. And, erm, fit). His theory was that it was either pleurisy, infection, or that I'd yanked a muscle (My dad mentioned the zip wire, so he thought it was possible I pulled something whilst going 30mph over the Tyne). My x-ray apparently looked normal, I never saw it. I think there were some funky sounds over the stethoscope though. He suggested that I increase my pred dose to 30mg for 5 days and then go back to normal, and hopefully it'll help, b/c it's most likely inflammation, or infection. He did suggest Cipro, and I point blank said 'Not on your life' b/c I've said that I'm refusing it, at least for now. I've kind of become resistant to it b/c it just doesn't work. If anything, I feel crap whilst on cipro and go back to how I was feeling before it, once I've finished the dose.

Anyway, yeah thats the gist of it. Bitchy lungs, and the outcome is 5 days of 30mg. I'm gonna be SO hungry.

1 comment:

Gem said...

Oh Megs that seriously crap!! Lung pain is not fun! I had serious hamster chops from the age of 11 until about 14. Stupid steroids! Hopefully because it's a short burst you'll be ok and FEEL BETTER!!! xx

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