Thursday, May 5, 2011

Prednisone

In honor of lupus awareness month, today's topic is the drug almost all of us with lupus are faced with having to take: prednisone.

Or as some of us pred-vets call it, dreadnisone.

It is used for everything- rashes, asthma, sarcoidosis, inflammation of any kind.
If they don't know what to do, throw prednisone at it. And it often works.
The problem is the side effects. And side effects seems like such a dainty word for things like osteoporosis, cataracts, diabetes, hair loss, obesity- is it really just a "side effect" when it can be classified as a disease?

Yes, prednisone saved my life. But if I had stayed on it, I would have ended up with even more health problems.

But what I really want to know is this:
Why, when my cat and I were both on prednisone (he had a flea allergy)- why, I want to know, was his cherry-flavored while mine tasted like Ajax? Discuss amongst yourselves, and sing along to the prednisone song: