Monkey Mind

Since I'm not a baseball player, competitive weight lifter, or looking to enhance my performance in any way, I've never delved into the wild world of steroids, nor had I planned to. I always figured I'd leave that to professionals.

Well, cancer will take you down many paths you didn't intend to travel down and these past couple weeks I have been receiving intravenous steroids once a week.

The intention with the steroids is to work with immune system so when it gets kicked to the ground by chemo, it doesn't fall so hard. It also helps with any possible allergic reaction that I may experience from this particular chemo drug.

In these two ways the steroids have mostly done their job. My white count has remained fairly stable and returns within a normal range in only 6 days after treatment. This is good, because it means I can keep receiving the treatments. As you can imagine, I want to stick to the treatment schedule so I can be done with this portion of the program.

Its also mostly kept the allergic reactions under control. I have a mild rash, which is itchy, but if I can keep from touching it, its like any other rash and will heal normally.

So I should write the steroids a thank you note, I guess.

I totally would do this (I'm old fashioned that way) but this drug has some pretty heavy side effects.

Ever head of steroid psychosis? Well, neither had I, until yesterday. After I'd explained to the nurse my strange mental state, she happened to mention it. I would say, given all that I've read about it since I heard the term, I had a pretty mild version.

I'm receiving a relatively low dose, only 25MG, but I also know I'm sensitive to medications. My body metabolizes medicines in a way I find very acute. To the medical ear, this may not make sense, but I know it to be true, even with something mild like Tylenol.

So pharmaceutically speaking, I'm a cheap date and 25MG of steroids have worked their evil magic on me. Yesterday, thankfully, I got only 10MG and can already tell that the monkeys have moved on. If I don't experience any allergic reaction this week, I'm not taking the steroids again.

Speaking from experience as a cancer patient, at the end of the day informed consent barely exists in this field of medicine.

I feel a bit bad saying this because I know my doctor and the nurses do intend to give the best care they can give. However, there is so much information that is simply not provided to the patient and I'm not sure why this is.

I'm not saying that knowing about steroid psychosis would have changed my decision to receive this medicine, but forewarned is forearmed. Had I known about it, I could have addressed it right away.

Instead though, I went through a really rough time. Alone. Too scared to tell anyone about it. And will do anything to avoid an encore performance, a la steroid style.

May it be so.