Steroids

The last week hasn't been a huge amount of fun for me, due to the fact that I began one of my five day steroid cycles last Monday. Now, this isn't an uncommon part of my treatment as one of these cycles comes around every 4 weeks or so and yet it still takes some growing accustomed to. Just to clarify, the steroids that I take do not allow you to suddenly grow huge muscles! Instead, they are a very important part of the chemotherapy treatment structure that I follow.

So these steroids come in the form of tiny tablets which I must take twice a day with my meals and they have some pretty weird effects. Now I know that everyone who takes them will react slightly differently to them but generally, the tablets redistribute fats around the body. Unfortunately, they redistribute this primarily to the stomach and face which means that no matter how much or little you eat, there's a very good chance that you're going to look a little chubbier for the period of time that you are on them. However, eating and drinking becomes a bit of a problem for me when I'm on my steroids as they are known to change your taste buds a little. Weirdly enough, the one major taste that is altered when I am taking my steroids, is water. For some reason, my tablets make it taste absolutely vile, to the point where I can't swallow it. Another effect that the steroids have on me is that I struggle to eat any food during the first 4 days of starting to take them. I'm not entirely sure why, but I end up finding it very difficult to stomach a few mouthfuls of anything at all over those few days. This is greatly annoying because come Wednesday and Thursday, I haven't eaten a proper meal in a while and so, feel starving, but can't consume anything without feeling very ill. However, by Friday, it's a different story. The steroids then work in reverse and the effects don't stop when I finish taking them on the Friday evening, as for the whole weekend my appetite is pretty insatiable and then by Monday, I'm back to normal again. As you can imagine this puts quite a strain on my poor parents who feel that they should feed me when I tell them that I'm hungry, only for me not to eat what they then present me with!

The steroids don't just affect me physically, they also change my moods too. My emotions become far more intense, both good and bad feelings. This leads to some really strange scenarios where I go from feeling almost euphoric, to feeling really angry in the blink of an eye and sometimes I, myself, don't even know the reason! The final thing that the steroids change about me, is that they can make me become quite fidgety and restless at times, which makes sitting still quite a challenge, particularly when I'm in school!

I do think that it's worth mentioning that obviously, all types of treatment will affect people in different ways and this is just my account of the effects that my steroids have on me.