Post Prednisone Post

I have now been off of prednisone for a full week. None. Zip. Zero. Nada.

"Caloo, Calay, Oh Frabjous Day! I chortle in my joy," to quote famous author and mathematician (and photographer of naked children, but let's not go there).

I should take another photo of my face and post it so that I can show you how much better my eye looks. However, I am still experiencing some minor double vision on some mornings when I fist wake up and do a little reading in bed. I will bring this up with whichever ophthalmologist I am seeing next, which is I think Dr. Farquhar at the end of the month.

Now, I just have to lose the prednisone weight gain. (Insert, maniacal laughter here.)

First follow-ups, and some backsliding

Sorry for the long delay between postings. Several things, including Christmas and New Year’s got in the way. In addition, I had a horrendous cold, got rid of it for a week and then came down with another one.

It is now three weeks since my last radiation treatment on my right eye. The eye is no longer swollen and appears to be normal. It is back in the same position as the left eye and I no longer look slightly wall-eyed. I had some redness in the eye and it was quite dry for about a week and a half. I treated it with prednisone drops once or twice a day and moisturizing eye drops once or twice a day.

I did not have any double vision for at least two weeks after the last treatment session. It hit me this past week how often I had been shutting one eye when I needed to read fine print. I had become so used to having double vision that it was a revelation when I didn’t have it anymore.

Ah, but my recovery has not been a bump-free road. I woke up Christmas morning with some double vision. This resolved after a couple of hours and I have had no real problems since. The dryness in my right eye has also resolved.

This past Tuesday, I saw Dr. Robert Della Rocca, the father of Dr. David Della Rocca who performed my surgery. He said the eye was looking quite good.

On Friday, I saw Dr. Kyung Han, the radiation oncologist. She was very happy with the progress my eye has been making and said that there could be further improvement.

As she examined me, I noted that she had a large bandage on one finger. I asked her what happened and she said that she had cut herself badly when, in her words, she “had been forced to cook” over Christmas. Then she confessed that she should have gone to the emergency room for stitches, but that she hated hospitals.

The last piece of good news is that I have dropped from 10 milligrams of oral prednisone down to 5 milligrams and am now on 2.5 milligrams per day. Hallelujah!! After a week on 2.5 milligrams per day, I can stop taking it altogether, according to Dr. Della Rocca.

Prednisone follies are now officially over, it seems. Here again, it appears that I did not know how bad things were until they resolved. I now can actually go for several hours without uncontrollable hunger. I am not talking a mile a minute. I don’t have acid indigestion most of the day.

On the other hand, I seem to be cracking fewer jokes. I have no idea what this means.

During the worst of the prednisone experience, when I was on 80 milligrams, I blamed everything on the drug. Constant hunger? Prednisone. Moodiness? Prednisone. Hurricane Katrina? Prednisone. The continued existence of Paris Hilton? Prednisone. I don’t know what I’ll do now that I don’t have this excuse for anything strange in my life.