So I have this problem every morning. After about the 3rd or 4th bottle, I can't remember what I've taken. Yes, they are in the same order every day. But somehow, my mind skips and I cannot remember taking the one-a-day vitamin for women over 50. Maybe they should add a memory helper to the multivitamin. Maybe they did and it works the opposite way on me. However ... I can either blame it on the pill that comes before or the prednisone that comes afterward. Not going to tell you about the pill before, except that it is blue and makes me laugh.
So it must be prednisone's fault. Everything is the fault of prednisone. For example, Wikipedia lists these as the major side effects:
- Increased blood sugar for diabetics
- Difficulty controlling emotion
- Difficulty in maintaining train of thought
- Weight gain
- Facial swelling
- Depression, mania, psychosis, or other psychiatric symptoms
- Unusual fatigue or weakness
- Mental confusion / indecisiveness
- Blurred vision
- Abdominal pain
- Peptic ulcer
- Infections
- Painful hips or shoulders
- Steroid-induced osteoporosis
- Stretch marks
- Osteonecrosis
- Insomnia
- Severe joint pain
- Cataracts or glaucoma
- Anxiety
- Black stool
- Stomach pain or bloating
- Severe swelling
- Mouth sores or dry mouth
- Avascular necrosis
- Hepatic steatosis
Of course, I don't have all of these side effects. Many of them I can't even pronounce and most of them I don't have at the moment. But when I was on high doses back in the 1980s, I had many of them ... and some of them persist even on a relatively low dose (7.5 mg/daily).
Oh, look ... there's mental confusion ... does that count as memory loss? Or maybe that is just the difficulty in maintaining train of thought. I'm still waiting to hear from my doctor whether I have an infection or not ... perhaps I'll remember to give him a call tomorrow. If prednisone doesn't make me forget.
When you look at the side effects of a drug, it's a wonder that any of us are brave enough to take a prescription to the pharmacy! I have to laugh at the commercials on television where the visuals are all lovely and beautiful scenes with happy people and the audio voice-over reads an endless list of side effects and "do not take 'X' if you have fill-in-the-blank-with-any-condition". I am actually quite friendly with most of the staff at my pharmacy, since they have filled and refilled many of the same things for me for years. (It's like going to the Cheers bar -- "you want to go where everyone knows your name.") But once in awhile, it's a good thing to check that list of side effects, even if the medication has been refilled for years. Maybe you are taking one pill to counteract the side effect of another pill that you stopped taking ... so then you get the side effects of that pill for no reason at all.
Time for sleep. I don't have a pill for that. But I will go visit the medicine cabinet.
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