Melissa Kite Melissa Kite

Real life | 6 August 2011

When the steroids stop

issue 06 August 2011

When the steroids stop

All good things come to an end. I had to stop taking the steroids sooner or later or I would start to look like one of those sprinters of indeterminate gender.

It was fun while it lasted, and came in really handy when my friend fixed me up on a dinner date with an older man. When the conversation hit a lull I mentioned that I was on prednisolone and we were away. You couldn’t shut us up. He had been on it for three months, because of a bladder operation, which rather trumped me, but it was still terribly jolly trading stories about side effects.

It was with great sadness, therefore, that I popped the last little 1mg pill at the end of my decreasing regime. When the mad itching started right on cue a day later, as the dermatologist warned me it would, I made an appointment to go back to discuss with him the ominous-sounding business of what he called ‘managing the condition’.

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