Corticosteroids: What I Learned from Prednisone :: Medicine Health Drugs

Corticosteroids: What I Learned from Prednisone If wellness equals homeostasis, then illness may be considered a loss or breakdown of homeostasis. Illness can be mild and require little or no intervention; sometimes the body will heal itself. At other times, though, illness can be a breakdown in the whole system. Sometimes, when something goes wrong, the brain loses the ability to fix itself or its extension, the body. To treat the illness, there are many drugs: some placebo-like and some are very potent, with enormous healing properties. Some drugs are homeopathic; they come from the earth in the form of herbs and have been used effectively to heal mild and annoying symptoms for hundreds of years. There are also beyond these, new and potent drugs that come from pharmaceutical laboratories. Some of these drugs have great healing power, but carry with them a double-edged sword, a healing edge and a destructive edge. It is one of these drugs, prednisone, that I wish to discuss in this paper. Physicians have prescribed prednison e to many of their patients who have life-threatening conditions. To illustrate, here is a quote from internationally known flutist and television commentator on the arts, Eugenia Zuckerman, who was diagnosed with an immunopathic lung disease. "I can breathe! In less than twenty-four hours I am practicing the flute with the kind of breath control I've been missing for months. And all it took was one day and sixty milligrams of prednisone! ...I feel a little shaky and weird, but I can play the flute! But now it is three days later. It is the middle of the night. I'm squinting into the mirror in the bathroom. Only seventy-two hours into my prednisone therapy and my face is definitely spreading. I'm already turning into a pumpkin." (2). I understand what Eugenia Zuckerman meant. I was also on prednisone. Corticosteroids (9) are wonderful-terrible-wonderful drugs. They make you crazy. (I was in psychotherapy.) They increase your appetite and increase your weight. (I was always hungry.) They put your nervous system on high alert. (I was nervous and frightened, my hands were shaky, and one eyelid twitched.) They produce edema. (My face and ankles swelled.) They cause insomnia, (I stayed up most of the night watching old movies on television.) Moreover, they give you the "gift" of boundless energy.