remission

yup. off steroids. off enemas. off 5-asa. just 6mp now.

i slept allllll day so i decided today would be day 1. yesterday i had a huge headache that started over my right eye, so i took tylenol, then percocet when that didn't work. woke up later with a headache all around my head like a crown of thorns. passed back out. finally woke up at 4:30 feeling ok. flopped around the house having bad memories and sad thoughts. then picked up a new knitting project that is going along ok. it's gonna get felted, so it's a great project to make mistakes and say eff it and leave the mistakes in place. i needed a mindless project for today.

so i'm gonna keep taking it easy, get back into being a good diabetic and getting my blood sugars back in line. gonna enjoy not taking pred anymore. i already feel less crazy and less bloated. i dropped 20 lbs. 15 to go to get under 200, then 10 more to get back to pre-pred weight, then 20 after that to get to about as close to my goal weight as i think i'll be able to get.

gonna keep not overdoing the caffeine and booze. no need to overwork my liver and pancreas. i think i had food poisoning or something last weekend. i barfed for 3 days straight. everything i ate came right back up, i called it trampoline tummy. my stomach and i finally agreed on eating some watermelon, but when i went to lay down, the trampoline kicked in and i projectile vomited all over our hotel room bathroom. so much for a romantic weekend away. maybe next weekend i'll make up for it. it's my 5 year anniversary, and if all goes well, it'll be my 1 week remission anniversary too.

yay me! :)

blarg

i like the not eating and losing weight aspect of this thing. i've always struggled with eating too much. i've never experienced the opposite. is this how skinny people normally feel? no wonder they can't put it away like i can. it's pretty bitchin... i'm down to 215, though most of that is still pred weight and should have been easy to lose. 25 to go until i'm back at pre-steroid weight, then another 20 to get to 2005 hottie weight. I don't think I can get much under 170 without involving amputations or giving up butter. and life without butter is not living.

the annoying thing though is i am such a picky eater now. and i'm getting afraid to eat yummy things. last night i ordered indian food from a place I ate at before without problems. even their mild food is spicy to me now. i got this awesome chicken gassi -- like a coconut/tamarind curry sauce... omg so good! and after a few bites was like, i probably shouldn't eat this anymore. so i moved on to the goat biryani. also incredibly good! but again, too spicy for my paranoia. the lentils and tandoori chicken that hubs got looked good, but were spicier than what i had already eaten (according to his palate, which tolerates much hotter stuff than mine!). so i didn't want to eat those either. so i had some naan and decided i wasn't hungry anymore.

and was sick all night again anyway.

sigh. so today, i had a muffin around noon, because i was kinda getting hungry. now it's 5, and i have heartburn and nausea. how can i get nauseous when there should be the perfect amount of foodstuff in me?! not too much, not too little, a fricking blueberry muffin causes heartburn? gah.

i have no idea what to eat tonight. i'll probably just get soup somewhere. i've been day dreaming about making a big ol pot of my chicken/veggie soup, even though it is 90 bazillion degrees outside. my mom put the idea in my head, she loves my soup. i would love like a vacation where all i do is sleep in my house and make home-cooked meals. i love cooking, but just don't have enough energy to work and cook. can i take maternity leave and baby myself for a few weeks?

bunny hill

back on a downward trend. i think i had a few weeks where I felt like a normal human at least part of the day, but i'm heading back down again. constant nausea, stomach pain, gi upset, sickness. waking up in the middle of the night again. hot, feverish, sweaty. pain everywhere. silver lining? total loss of appetite. makes it easier to lose the pred weight. down to 2 mg pred. down to 215 lbs. still fat, but less so. i'm ok with this -- as long as i'm not bleeding and as long as i'm losing weight. i got plenty to burn. chronies as a rule seem to be rather skinny and don't have alot of padding, so malnutrition is a big issue. i got lots of blubber. the only things i can eat are eggs, toast, and soup. and crab, oddly enough. everything else tries to escape my body as quickly as possible.

less depressed this week. less suicidal ideation. less wanting to go to the vet to put myself to sleep (where do you keep that pink stuff you give mastiffs with terminal cancer?). more diarrhea. i guess this is better? still sticking myself with needles twice a day. now have to start sticking myself with cortenema at night. but i still have my guts, which is definitely better.

drug fatigue

ever just want to take fewer drugs just because you're sick of managing so many drugs? I just kinda stopped taking colazal last month, because swallowing 9 pills a day is a pain in the ass.

i was really bad about doing my morning insulin injections, but i put my big girl pants on and just started doing them gain. it's weird, it's 10 units instead of 50, but my skin reacts so much more to it. probably coincidence. i'm running out of room to stick myself. twice a day sucks ass.

i'm happy i'm down to 5 pred, because it means one less drug to keep track of, along with just wanting to get off demon prednisone for all the nice side effects.

i'm stuck with nuvaring because of the whole don't wanna get preggers thing. plus i love saying "no thanks" to the fake cycle i get on my off week. but that one's easy -- i really only deal with it once a month.

i'd like to get off lexapro, in part because i feel it's not really working. i started taking it years ago to treat my "ibs" -- such bullshit. i wonder if i'd be the same or worse without it.

6mp and me will probably be bestest friends forever until it stops working. 3 pills at night aint so bad.

claritin and singulair are also my bffs, because without them i want to peel off my skin with a paring knife and my lungs close up like they are filled with sand.

i take metformin twice a day, but once i get off pred i should be back to once a day, and can stop taking the insulin too. and i'll have to diet and exercise because i won't have the excuse of the prednisone in my way. i want my good a1c back dammit :)

and walgreens doesn't seem to give you any way to delete old/expired prescriptions, so i have like 65 on my records. only 9 or so are active because I keep hiding the ones I don't want to take anymore. that includes test strips and needles for the insulin too. i finally polished off my first box of 100 needles. if i'm a good girl, the next 100 should go even faster, if i remember to actually do my shots.

circles

i can't stay awake without caffeine

caffeine awakens the beast in my guts

sources of caffeine make my stomach feel sick - such as the bubbles in diet coke and the tannins in iced tea. I don't even mess with coffee anymore (the beast LOVES coffee).

i drank copious amounts of iced tea on my customer visit last thursday.

was severely nauseous all night thursday

and all day friday

and all night friday

and all day saturday

gave up and threw up on saturday

felt better for a bit, then I started the D saturday night

and all day sunday

and all night sunday

and stayed away from caffeine

and was a zombie this morning

was so tired it hurt

so i had a diet coke for lunch

i can't live without caffeine

good news!

dare i say it? the persistent nausea has decided to leave! hooray! i mean, i still have my seabands in case it comes back, but i realized yesterday that i hadn't worn them for a few days. awesome!

i'm down to 12.5 mg pred and feeling pretty good about that. i'm still fatigued and still go from 0 to bitch in 6.5 seconds, but other than that, things are looking up. i can deal with the abdominal pain and weird joint pains I've been having. there's just something about nausea that makes it harder to deal with than pain. probably because when you're in pain, you're not in danger of spewing pain all around you, but nausea definitely involves the threat of spewing.

while i'm being gross, i stepped in cat puke again last night. little cat barfed, big cat ate it. cats are so disgusting.

blerg

today was just rotten. it started at midnight, when i got home, and could not sleep.

i rolled around for 5-7 hours, and eventually passed out in time to hear my alarm go off.

then i stepped in cat puke

then i decided to test my fingertip with my lancet instead of my arm, but I didn't retract the thinger from level 4 (deepest poke) to level 1 (fingertip-appropriate poke). mondayfriday that hurt

then i found out that my bearded dragon was dead :(

then i got a txt from hubs, who slipped and fell and broke his arm, in Texas :( :(

and i was already late for work, so I wrapped up my dearly beloved beardie, put her in the fridge.

got to the office, made a dr appointment to fix the husband and found a pet cemetary that charged reasonable rates for a reptile cremation.

later, i'll email this awesome pottery artist and ask if she can make an urn for my Zoey.

then over the weekend i'll have to get her to the pet cemetary. maybe after the long weekend. until then, i'll have to keep her in the freezer i guess.

Man, looks like July isn't going to be any better than June or May. crapadoodledoo