Corticosteroids and co
I started with 20 mg of corticosteroids daily rapidly reduced to 9mg and then 5mg after the third chemo.The downside of these medications? When combined with a diet that is too salty or too sweet, they cause water retention, which makes your face look puffy. Be careful, not like a soccer ball as with some cortisone treatments, it's less obvious, but you know you don't look like yourself.
When you wake up, you already look more sleepy than before, and God knows that for me, that's quite an achievement. The problem is that even for the rest of the day, you look like you just got out of bed. You can see your eye sockets more clearly because everything around them is slightly puffy, making them look deeper and darker too. And since, when you're really tired, the area around your eyes turns gray, even black, and your skin is whiter than usual, so you look like a zombie. Just to top it all off, your eyelids swell slightly, making you unrecognizable to yourself. It's not obvious, it's not Elephant Man, but it's enough to confuse you: who's that? Oh yeah, it's me... But... is this temporary or is this my new face from now on?
You talk about it with one of the three Charlie's Angels, who advises you to avoid eating too much salt and sugar so as not to aggravate the problem. Pretty quickly, you realize that “too much” is too much. The problem isn't “too much salt” in your diet: just “salt” is enough. That's one of the things I hated: looking in the mirror and not recognizing myself 100%.
Not only do corticosteroids make you look ugly, they also make you hyper. Before, my blood pressure was between 9.5 and 11.5, now it's always between 11 and 14. It definitely makes you less zen. You tend to get worked up over little things that you wouldn't have even noticed before. It even leads to heated exchanges and arguments where nothing would have happened otherwise. And since you look terrible, imagine the effect on the person you're talking to when they see a guy who already looks scary, out of control, ranting and raving because he can't find his keys, for example.
It's not easy for either side, because we can't control these outbursts, especially me, as I'm not used to these kinds of angry explosions. I don't know what to do with them or how to channel them. They come out because they have to, and they splash all over the place, because, despite everything, you're not saying completely meaningless things.
