Friday, January 20, 2017

Today is a Monumental Day

Today is a big day. No, I’m not talking about the Country. No more talk of politics for me right now, I’m exhausted from it. 
Today is a big day for me. 
Big doesn’t begin to describe it. Monumental, that’s better. Today is a monumental day for me. 

Today marks the one year anniversary of no prednisone.  ONE WHOLE YEAR without taking a single milligram.

Now, I know you’re probably thinking, “why is she celebrating this?” or “I really don’t get why she’s so excited about medication”. 

Go back and read some of my old posts and you can kind of get an idea why I’m so excited.

I’ve tried many many times to do this before and I’ve never lasted more than a week.
I still feel like it won’t mean as much to anybody other than me, but that’s okay. 
I’m not going to let anyone stop me from celebrating!

This was something I never thought I would be able to do.
So much so, that I literally told my Rheumatologist: “Good luck trying to get me off 1 milligram, my body can’t do it. I’ve been on it for over 9 years now and it’s yet to be done”.

She told me we were gonna try anyway.

January 20th, 2016 I woke up and did not take my 1mg pill. That was day 1. 
I went through hell. Mentally, physically, and emotionally. 
My body had gotten so used to having something, that it did not know how to function without it. 
My body had to essentially learn how to remake the pieces that the prednisone replaced. 
I was moody; high and low, depressed and angry, and exhausted all the time.
It was a really bad first 6 months. 
And I’m not exaggerating, you can ask anyone who was around me during that time and they’ll be happy to tell you! 

After that, I was somewhat back to normal. 
I still, to this day no lie, struggle mentally.

Let’s take a few weekends ago. I woke up and could barely move. I laid in bed all day watching Bridget Jones and cuddling with Adele. I was hurting everywhere. The old Kara could have gotten up and popped a 5mg prednisone and would have been fine in a few hours. The new Kara knew that she could easily do that, but had to force herself to forget that the pills were there because she didn’t want to relive the first 6 months again. I find myself sometimes craving a solymederol drip (liquid prednisone) because I know I’ll feel that instant gratification of no pain. Like, if I could just go get an IV, I know I would feel better. But I know the withdrawal would be worse. 

Knowing you’re in pain and have the medication to stop it, but not allowing yourself to take it….that’s a struggle. 
Constantly outweighing the pros and cons of the steroid and how healthy your body has become since being off of it, are all things that go through my mind.

If you’ve ever taken it, you know the effects…now multiple that by 9 and you have me. 
I see that I’m better and that I’m able to handle what pain I’m experiencing. 
If I had known then what I know now, would I have tried to stop sooner? 
I honestly couldn’t tell you. 
I’m have a great list of medications that I wasn’t on before. My doctor actually thinks I’m under-medicated which I think is funny!

But everything happens when it’s supposed to happen, I trust that. 

“Kara, why do you still have the pills?”

I still have them incase there’s an emergency. Incase I wake up one day and I’m too sick to handle something myself. 
I can never allow myself to be unprepared for something. 
My immune system is too unpredictable for that. 
Especially knowing I have a history of unpredictable hospitalizations!
I guess the little pill bottle has become my safety net.

Only there for emergency situations!

Hopefully, that never happens.

But really, one year.
I’ve been able to go one year when I’ve never lasted more than 7 days. 

I still can’t believe it!