My initial experience with anxiety/depression and IV steroids, outlined in my last post, proved to be very traumatic and a life lesson in getting appropriate help. I hate steroids, but I did them again this past spring during my last relapse. I’m glad they’re there, and I now know how to better cope when taking them (I make sure to get a prescription for Klonopin, a sleep/anxiety medication which works best for me while on them.) A friend of a friend is going to school for her counseling degree and she mentioned the possible mania and deep depression that result from steroid use. I actually experienced a milder version of anxiety and sadness this time around, and I also found myself doing something quite odd (I recently told this same story to another MSer:)
The strangest thing I ever did on steroids was lust after, buy, and return a blowup baby pool. It was June and I couldn’t sleep, so I was up at 4 am with the cat and I couldn’t tear myself away from the Sears.com website. I was lusting for one of those shallow pools with a filter, so I kept going to the website and looking at it. Finally I decided to buy it. Then I anticipated its arrival. Every day waiting for that damned pool. Then it arrived and the filter kept breaking, so I deflated it, stuck the whole thing in a couple of black Hefty bags, and dumped them on the customer service desk at my local Sears. I really chewed them out. This whole pageantry lasted my entire steroid use (about 2 weeks.) I normalized (somewhat) after that.
I don’t know what to expect with my next steroid go-round (I’m assuming this year’s won’t be my last), but I have found that it is definitely a learning experience and being fully on an antidepressant before using them, as well as visiting regularly with my therapist, helped me tremendously this past June. Just like with the steroids, I’m not fond of taking antidepressants, but I’m so glad they’re available.
