For anyone who’s had their life turned upside-down by a diagnosis or treatment, Ben Shaberman wants you to know you are not alone. He gets it. Really.
I’m like a two-year-old thoroughbred pacing my paddock day and night — veins bulging, nostrils flaring, steam rising off my back. I stare intently at each jockey, trainer, and groomer passing by. Occasionally, I thrust my nose out to get someone’s attention. “Hey buddy, ya’ comin’ to turn me loose?” I don’t care if they think I’m Mister Ed or a gallop away from the glue factory. All I know is that I’m ready to run. Over and over, I hear the flugelhorn calling me to the start:
Bum bum bum bumpulah bumpulah bum bum bum…
It’s post time, baby! Open the gate, load me in, and let me go!
Whether I’m typing on a laptop, lying awake in bed at two in the morning, sitting in a movie theater, or weaving through rush-hour traffic on the DC Beltway, this is how I feel on prednisone. I’m on 60 milligrams a day — a hefty dose of the steroid to knock down my autoimmune system, which has hijacked my large intestine for the last few weeks. The condition is ulcerative colitis, and, well, let’s just say it’s been scatological mayhem. I lost 10 pounds in 10 days, leaving me completely drained of strength, dignity, and hope. But fortunately, the pred is working as advertised; it’s quieting things down, and I’m slowly recovering.
I can’t stay on the juice forever. While it’s a mainstay short-term therapy for suppressing the immune system and a variety of inflammatory conditions, long-term use breaks the body down, leaving it susceptible to all sorts of infections and dangerous maladies. So I’ll need to slowly taper the dosage to bring me back to normal steroidal equilibrium.
Some friends have suggested gentler, more natural alternatives for quieting my colon down. Peppermint tea. Coconut macaroons. With all due respect, I told them, in my condition, cookies and a beverage would be like landing on Normandy Beach during the D-Day invasion with only a fly swatter.
So for now, in my therapeutic deal with the devil, I am bouncing off the walls. Being in this manic state of anticipation — including fleeting moments of doom and elation — isn’t all bad. I feel ready to rock, tuned in, hyper-conscious. I’m keenly aware of my surroundings. The world’s popping out at me. And, I’m popping out at the world. I want to do stuff: clean the bathroom, do my taxes, call my mother, schedule meetings, cancel meetings, re-think strategies, tie-up loose ends, plan that long-overdue vacation, finish an essay, begin another. Can we talk? I mean, talk-talk. Come on, listen to me blather away as my mouth shifts from fourth gear into overdrive.
Though it boosts productivity, there are many things I wouldn’t recommend doing on prednisone, including calling up jilted girlfriends to catch up on life, or taking up live-target knife throwing as a new adventure hobby.
And if you happen to have a hankering for military action, I wouldn’t recommend going into battle on vitamin P — you’re liable to have a Full-Metal-Jacket-fueled impulse leading to a bonehead tactical decision that gets you blown to smithereens.
Instead, watch a Vietnam documentary and live vicariously through someone else. That’s what I did. For me, a Netflix program on the Tet Offensive against the South Vietnamese was a real humdinger. I’ll tell you, the rat-tat-tat-tat machinegun fire from Charlie hiding in the hilltop bushes came right off the screen into my apartment. And serendipitously, the relentless shrieking from my neighbor’s baby during the show made a convincing case there had been a simultaneous nepalm attack next door. (In reality, the kid’s probably just prepping for a career down the road on Capitol Hill.)
I have other words of caution if you happen to predni-zoning: Be careful about what music you expose yourself to. You might be unwittingly scanning your car-radio dial, stopping for a moment on a classic-rock station, and wham!
You hear the opening guitar riff to Black Sabbath’s Paranoid:
Wah nah nah nahnahnahnahnahnahnahnah
Wah nah nah nahnahnahnahnahnahnahnah
Suddenly, your brain becomes instantly locked into a tortuous audio loop of the tune for days on end.
Yes, this happened to me. After having ignored the heavy-metal homage to mental illness for 39 of the last 40 years, it became my own personal psychiatric disorder: Paranoid-a-mania. Worse yet, there’s My-Sharona-mania or the chart-topping collection of easy-listening psychoses known as Manilow-a-manias.
And therein for me lies one of the most vexing issues with prednisone. Not only is there no escape from having my pedal stuck to the floor 24-7, I get ambushed by all sorts of random sensory experiences, especially sounds like rap-music cell-phone ringtones, TV jingles, pop-up computer videos, and even the droning refrigerator in my studio apartment when it kicks on in the middle of the night. It sounds like a bulldozer’s coming out of my kitchen headed straight for me.
I’ve found one respite, albeit temporary, from the grip of prednisone. And that’s to actually become that thoroughbred and go for a run. I’ve been an avid runner for three decades, namely because I’m addicted to the wonderful, stress-relieving chemicals, i.e., the endorphins and endocannabinoids, released by the brain after a jaunt of 30 minutes or more. For a few hours after I finish, they over-ride the pred buzz, and I feel free and at peace. It’s as if my head’s soaking in a bubble bath.
But alas, I know the beast will eventually rear its ugly and claim me once again — mind, body, and soul. And I accept and embrace it the best I can, because I know at the end of the day, prednisone is keeping me out of the glue factory.
Photo: rashida s. mar b./Flickr