horsetail is a plant!
It was with chagrin that, told to take a mirror to drawing class, I had to do a self portrait. It was actually psychologically painful for me to look closely at the sagging, wrinkled skin. Fortunately the instructor realized that none of us was enjoying this exercise (we are all over the hill) so next week we can bring in a photo of someone else!
Also, I had a pneumonia shot last year. Bled at the time, and developed a huge bruise which lasted for weeks. Have had blood taken twice since then, different arms, and both times developed huge bruises, which fortunately don't last as long as the one in my upper arm. I suppose this is pred related, but I don't think it will get better. I think I was young for my age, and now I'm older and it's the rapid aging which has been so hard to accept.
And one of the downsides of pred is that it does speed the aging process...
I have always called it Mare's Tail. It is one of the most pernicious weeds I have ever come across.
I have had bruises on my arm from giving blood that were so impressive I put them on Facebook. However my current blood nurse does not make hardly a mark even when I am having loads of tests. She said the nurse who causes the bruises is not very good at doing it. The bad nurse has also caused bleeding which apparently should not happen. I left her room and bled all over the carpet in the corridor, it made a pretty nasty mess of my sweater as well as the carpet! She is incredibly pompous and thinks she is the bee's knees. I try to avoid her and ask for my new nurse. I do get bad bruising from pred and you can even see my osteopath's fingerprints!
Double Base Gel, disappears as you put in on.
Age 79 and counting......................
I think a lot of this depends upon the person. I think a very positive attitude has a lot fo do with gettting through all of this. I refuse to just buy into all of it. I still walk 5 miels a day, I eat right, keep very active, and just try to look at the glass as half full, not half empty. I thimk that hope is what keeps us all going. Without hope, we tend to fall into a trap. There are many who say that prednisone causes weight gain. I have a friend who did gain weight on prednisone, but she laughed and said it made her hungry all the time, thus she put more gas in her tank than she could use in a day - result, weight gain. I am just going to keep pouring on moisturizers. I do know that our skin cells, and all of our body cells are always regenerating. That is one of the miracles of the human body. I think the person who posted on here that he was told by his doctor that once off prednisone that the skin would get better. I do think this is possible. I think we need to do all that we can to combat what prednisone does to us, but we also need to go on with our lives without always thinking that PMR has doomed us forever. I just refuse to think that way. That is one reason I am not on here a lot. Oh, I just looked up the ingredients in the shower gel that I use and feel pretty good about it. I think it cannot simply be liquid soap since it leaves my shower shiny with absolutely no film to have to scrub off. I actually made my husband change to shower gel, or else I wanted him to clean the shower. Ha Ha He was blown away by how the shower and glass door stayed clean. This is probalby one reason that many hotels and cruise ships provide shower get.
It is a skill - and it is appalling when someone doesn't know they are rubbish at it. When I worked at Barts we had a guy in the lab who had been taken on as a cleaner. he was given various other tasks to do over the years and for some reason they let him learn to do phlebotomy. He was AMAZING! He never missed a vein - and we all got him along when we had a really difficult patient. I learnt a lot from him.
I agree it depends on the person. And their age and their other illnesses.
A short time spent on a vasculitis or lupus forum makes you realise that PMR is really not the end of the world for most people. It doesn't kill. But there are people who have a more complex medical problem and who truly struggle with both GCA/PMR and pred. I also do have to say - 13 years of PMR is a bit of a pain!!!!!
What a lovely story.
Yes, 13 years would be bit much. I am also on another site via Facebook for the eye disease that I have. The one thing I find on there, is that everyone is cheefrul. I checked it out everyday and comment freuqently. Basically we joke about how many times we have fallen over the dishwasher door when it is down. We don't see things that eveyrone else does. Basically we are all going blind, however at different rates. I have had this eye disease for 46 years, so I have been quite blessed that I still have a little bit of central vision. We are all very different, but I have learned in my long battle with this declining vision that the sun still comes up each day, I still have family and friends who love me, life is still pretty darned good. I am happy each day that I am still on the top side of the grass. I do not like PMR, but there are many things that are much worse. I would like to get off of prednsone for sure. I am down to 5 mg from 20 mg beginning a bit over a year ago. We all just need to put one foot in front of the other. Well, for me, I need to remind myself to look before I put that one foot in front of the other. LOL As I mentioned before HOPE is the key. For those of us who are going blind, we still have that HOPE for a cure. So, I am still feeling that there is HOPE that my skin will recover. In the meantime I shall take good care of it. :-)
The skin on my arms looks like crepe paper. Will that change when I come off steroids?
Will was a lovely lovely man! It was the best set of colleagues I have ever had!
No idea Silver - I'm developing that too. Not impressed!
PS - losing weight also seems to make it worse...
My mother was at Barts but probably a long time before you were there!
Just before Christmas I went to a party in the Great Hall, really steeped in history. Amazingly enough the food was excellent. We were entertained by a band made up of a load of medics!
And I bet he wasn't arrogant.
'twas well over 40 years ago, just before and after we got married! Doesn't time fly when you're enjoying yourself!
Don't think the word existed in his vocabulary! He really was humility personified.
Oh, no. So weight on or weight off it's there. I could wrap presents in it but it's not very colourful.