*I’m forcing myself to finish this post after days of stalling, leaving it half completed. I want to finish for my fellow spoonies; I’m just feeling a bit exposed. *

Over the years, I’ve often shared about my prednisone journey, posting memes, and trying my best to keep my good humor as it has brought incredibly painful side effects to my body as well as deeply distressing changes to my appearance.

At times, my maintenance dosage was as high as 60mg per day – and the “moon face” was so pronounced that my eyes were almost swollen shut.

Thankfully, over the past few years, as new doctors have been adjusting my medications, my prednisone dosage has (slowly) come down significantly. With that, I have gradually come to look like myself again, as well as losing weight – so important to my joint pain and health.

(It seems I will never be off the prednisone – and my dose now would be high for many people – but I am a long way from where I started).

This prednisone issue has come up – first in a very unsettling way – and then in a joyful one in the past week.

First, for the distressing part of this tale, I have been working on a photo project that has had me going through years of family photos.

My initial plan was to use at least one photo per year from the past 13 years my wonderful husband and I have spent together – but I very quickly realized that there are a few whole years I absolutely will not be including.

Yes, I am fully aware of the reason for changes in my appearance – worst of all in my face – and I will never forget anyway what it was like – but I was still absolutely weeping trying to sort them and the thought of permanently memorializing them in a print form is so upsetting.

I am sharing a few of them here only so we can talk about my broader point – and the sharing is part of why this post has been sitting since Monday.

The point of posting several of these prednisone pictures is that there are literally years of them.

As we spoonies all know, we have to just live with the side effects of whatever meds we are on – and I had a rheumatologist that left me on high doses of prednisone with it destroying the rest of my body and eating my bones.

Now that I am on other meds and lower pred, I still have autoimmune symptoms and pain – there is no magic cure for those as we all know – but I have slowly seen the awful effects of the long term steroids abate.

Which brings me to the brighter side of this post.

As it happened, it was my errand day on Monday – after I’ve been doing all of my picture sorting – and I caught sight of myself in the full-length mirror at TJ Maxx – and I really saw regular non-Stay Puft  *me* if that makes any sense.

After so long fighting the steroids, I finally just look like myself again.

(I’m sure I looked extra lulu stopping to take a picture – but I didn’t care 😉 )

There are so many lingering effects from the prednisone that cannot be changed – like the stress fractures throughout my feet and the need for long-term antibiotic therapy because I am immunocompromised and a MRSA carrier – but I am so grateful that this part of it is over.

A change that profound is just hard – and all my love to my fellow spoonies who are having to walk through it right now. It is so difficult. ❤

Be well, everybody. Take care of yourselves and each other.

Grace and Blessings.