The Steroid Diet

Someone needs to break into my house and make sure there are no crumbs of junk food, no cookies, no cake mixes, no brownie mixes, no pie crusts, and no chocolate at all. I feel tremendously guilty for the amount of food I'm eating, but as long as it's fruit, veggies, and healthier choices, I feel a little less guilty. Here's a sneak peak at today.

Breakfast
1 banana
2 toasted whole grain English muffins with light jelly
½ can of Coke

Snack
1 banana

Snack
1 orange

Lunch
1 thin cut, grilled pork chop
1 cup of applesauce
1 bowl of peas
1 huge tumbler of ice water

Snack
1 banana

Dinner
1 bison hot dog on a whole wheat bun, with chopped red onions, pickles and mustard
1 ear of corn
1 can of Coke

Snack
1 banana

Snack
5 teaspoons of peanut butter
1 large glass of milk

Midnight Snack
1 handful of walnuts
1 bowl of pineapples


HELP! Who eats 4 bananas a day? I'm not even hungry and my brain is telling me I am. When I question my stomach, it simply says, "Dude, I'm worn out. If you send any more food down here, I'm going to return it to sender."

And then I reach for another snack anyway.

I think about poor Bernie Mac, who had sarcoidosis like me, and how he died of pneumonia, even though he was in remission. This disease does a real job on your lungs, let me tell you, so even if he was in remission, I would be guessing it still played a big role. I think about that and take my next dose of steroids, to stave off my current spell of the disease, and hope I don't run into anyone with a contagious respiratory condition. Or with a chocolate cupcake. Because I'll walk away with both, no doubt.

We better hope I run out of friut and other food, or there could be a case of spontaneous human explosion here, and all they'll find is post-digested banana sticking to the walls. Or maybe I'm better off with the bananas, oranges and pineapples, because it could be chocolate bars and French fries instead. And that would smell bad if I exploded.

Please, someone sneak into my kitchen and make sure there is only good food around. And take the bananas away. Five bowel movements in one day is a bit excessive.

And this doesn't even touch on the mood swings and insomnia. Crying fits and being awake 21 hours a day just seem to make me more hungry. Why is that?

The good news is that the swelling in my feet is almost gone, the pain is but a memory, and now all I have to deal with is bruised muscles, my swollen ankles stubbornly hanging onto the fluid, and the hideous scarring all up and down my legs and feet, making me look like my legs got run over by a truck. It will probably take about six months to a year for the tissue scarring to go away completly, but at least I can walk again. Which makes walking to the kitchen easier.

Dammit, now I want another banana!

Take Cover!

Let the ‘roid rage begin! Again!

The day after I called an ambulance to the house because my mom was dying of an overdose, I woke up with some big, red spots on my legs. I figured they were bug bites, even though they didn’t itch. That was the end of June. They never went away, but grew in size and became more and more painful.

Something else terribly personal and tragic happened in the beginning of July, and as it was happening, as I was sitting there, awash in emotions I couldn’t even begin to deal with, I noticed more red spots erupting on the tops of my feet. I remember thinking, “Fucking spiders,.” even though I never saw one. However, these bumps never itched either, but became quite painful the next day, and they also have not gone away.

I remember sitting at work and researching spider bites between helping patrons, and for some reason, I was still convinced it could be a brown recluse trying to kill me with multiple bites. I was in denial.

In the end of July, another insane crisis blindsided me, and the following day, I woke up with more red bumps on the soles of my feet, right in the arches, and my feet and ankles became so swollen that I had to forego socks and most of my shoes. I’m down to having only three pairs of shoes I can stretch over my feet. That was when I realized this was no spiteful, venomous spider.

The sarcoidosis has flared up something awful, giving me hideous erythema nodosum all over my legs, and it’s starting on my arms now. Today, I found myself in my doctor’s office, crying my eyes out and begging for help because I can’t sleep from the pain, and I can hardly bend my feet at the ankles anymore. Help, for me, comes in the form of 40 mg of prednisone daily, which means I’m about to embark on some fun times of mood swings, food binges, and insomnia, the likes of which could lead to me disowning my friends and family (which I have done before), redecorating my room at 3 a.m., or spending all my spare change on chocolate bars, only to eat them all in one gluttonous sitting. We shall see how this episode unfolds.

Meet my left foot.



You know it’s serious when your favorite doctor, who has been treating you for 12 years and is the only one you trust to help you in this time of need, brings in his partners to gawk at girl with this rare and severe case of E. nodosum. And what did they all say?

“Oh, I’m so sorry for your condition. Is your hair BLUE? WOW!”

So, even though I have what looks like elephantiasis of the lower legs, my blue hair is still what people see. I guess that’s good. Let’s just hope that’s not how I’m identified in security footage at a local convenience store after throwing a steroid-induced tantrum over a lack of Nestle Crunches one night.