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Wednesday 2 January 2019

Steroids part 3: 3mg

I have been on the steroids for about two months. I started with 9mg, went down to 6mg about a month ago. That was the worst one so far. Now last week I went down to 3mg. I have been on it for several days, and I will be on it for only a week and then stop. I was meant to lower myself on this earlier, but it's not recommended to lower dose if you have a cold and I ended up having quite bad one. In fact so bad, that I had to go back on the 9mg dose for some days to help my body combat it.

Being on the lower dose, I have noticed a few things again. My acne is now almost gone. I still have a few red spots, but they look like to be healing rather than angry ones they used to be. Also I haven't gotten new ones and I can actually see my proper skin behind them!
I ended up getting quite bad moon face with all this. It just means that my face swell up quite badly looking like the moon man. With every decrease, it has been going down considerably. I still have moon face but it's a lot better now than it was. I can see some contours of my cheeks now!
I feel more tired again. Last time worst lasted about a week. This time it should be easier, since my body is producing more cortisols. I haven't been exhausted without a reason. I get tired, but more manageable tired than the exhaustion. I have had a few instances of needing to sleep half a day, but I put that down as having very aggressive cold. 

I think one of the worst things of this whole experience is that I felt normal, like myself while I was on the highest dose, and that I can barely recognise myself in the mirror. With my face being like a basketball with roundness and with the worst acne I can imagine, it's not easy. You can deal with changes like that better when they happen slowly and you have time to adjust, but with steroids, they happened within one week.
Also my blood sugars are slightly coming down and they are somewhat easier to control. They are still higher and I still need a lot more insulin than I used to, but it's more manageable. I really do hope that when I stop taking them, my face will go back to normal as would my blood sugars. Good thing with all this was that my eye check happened to be over a month after starting steroids, and I did not get any steroid damage to my eyes. It can happen very quickly! It often doesn't go away when stopping. It will slow down and possibly stop getting worse, but too often, it doesn't disappear on it's own.

At least now I know what to expect when they start this again. My doctors seem quite confident I have autoimmune hepatitis, so they will put me back on when my ALT starts going back up after this treatment.

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