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:

May is lupus awareness month

How do I say this? Happy lupus awareness month? That seems really inappropriate. We're not really celebrating the fact that this disease exists. On top of that, I'm a day late in getting started commemorating the beginning of this month.

I think we're finally getting it together. For a while, October was lupus awareness month. Then it was October for some lupus groups and May for others. And it was purple ribbons for some lupus groups and orange for others (I think that's still the case). And then there's House, MD. He's no help at all. I'll save him for another blog.

All that aside, here we are. For a disease that has over 1.5 million people diagnosed, lupus still needs some serious help in the awareness department. One of the reasons we need awareness is to cut down on the odd reactions we get from other people when we're finally diagnosed.

The comments I got when I was first diagnosed ranged from hurtful to just weird. Here I present to you, from my book (How Can You *Not* Laugh at a Time Like This?," The Top 10 Annoying Things to Say to Someone Who's Just Been Diagnosed.