When I got home, I took some Zantac (to protect my stomach), took some potassium (to calm my heart-poundiness), and drank lots of water to begin flushing the steroids out of my system. I tried to limit the amount of peanut M&Ms I ate and filled up my stomach with lots of carrots throughout the evening. Last night I took two Restoril at around 10:30pm to try to get some sleep. An hour later, I was still wide awake so I took one more pill. Finally, I think my eye lids were getting heavy around midnight. I managed to sleep until 6:30am (success!). Today, I’ve already had two Decadron and will take more tonight. I’ll repeat this whole process until Monday morning when I go back for my IVSM.
Acceptance and Action
It’s funny. When talking with my nurse practitioner, I mentioned that I had lived in denial of this developing relapse for almost week. If someone had presented all the same information to me and asked for advice, I would have told them to call their doctor. I needed to follow my own advice.
It’s been since the summer of 2009 that I had a full-blown, undeniable relapse. Since starting Rituxan, my possible relapses have been small and not worth steroids (although we did experiment with six month of pulse steroids last year and they did improve my symptoms at the time). I suppose it was “time” for a relapse as I had been doing well for so long. No treatment has 100 percent relapse reduction rate.
Already I feel better about my choice to call the doctor’s office and start treatment immediately. I can deal with the negative side-effects and manage to do well this weekend. Maybe even my walking will be somewhat improved. At least it shouldn’t be worse but I will still need to be extra cautious around all of the expensive musical instruments this weekend. I definitely don’t want to be responsible for something getting damaged due to my unsteady balance. Fingers crossed.
Now it is almost 10:30am on Saturday morning and I need to go shower and warm-up my embouchure. I’ve got rehearsal across town (35 to 45 minutes away) at 1pm. I want to arrive extra early so that I can visit the bathroom and get seated before the majority of the players seated around me arrive. It should all work out fine.
Taking action now (although I was hesitant) feels good. I recommend that you do that same if you are ever in a similar situation. Don’t stay in denial for too long so that you can halt your relapse in its steps, especially if you’ve got lots going on. Hope everybody has a great weekend and Thanksgiving holiday.
Lisa Emrich is author of the blog Brass and Ivory: Life with MS and RA and founder of the Carnival of MS Bloggers.
