What they don't tell you about steroids

Nobody told me about this.

I had heard that prednisone was a nasty drug, but didn't think much about it. Even after being on it for three weeks (at 70mg) and then starting "the taper". 50mg for a week, then 30mg, then 20mg, then 10mg, then 5mg. No big deal. Except that the trigger we have to tell us to stop eating seems to get broken - I was hungry all the time (I bought a Costco pumpkin pie and ate it myself over two days). Can't say this was really a downside, as I lost a lot of weight when I couldn't taste anything. 

So everything is just ducky. Until the taper down to 20mg. Then something happened. My face turned bright red, and I got really tired (like, chemo-tired). It was hard to get out of bed in the morning and make it to the couch. When I called the nursing line to ask about this, they said "yup, know about that, it's a side effect of the taper". I went onto Google Gemini and frightened myself.

Today, after being on 5mg for a couple of days, I think things are getting back to normal. Energy is slowly returning, the red face is mostly gone, appetite is back to normal. Still tired, but better than it was.

Now maybe I get a couple of months of feeling "normal". It's been a while...