Question on Fatigue

[Green Grass & High Tides]

Sorry to hear about the psychiatric piece. Maybe your doctor will be able to determine if the Fatigue and Psych Issues are Prednisone side effects (Glucocorticoid Adverse Reaction). If it is, studies indicate it is brain damage to the HPA Axis. It causes atrophy to the hippocampus. It may cause permanent damage. Neuroendocrinologists are doing some amazing research right now on this stuff.

STEROIDS CAN CAUSE BRAIN DAMAGE: Read up on the long term brain damage NBC News- Jane Pauley got from steroids. It’s not the small matter many would portray. This Steroid Psychosis link has a bunch of info and meds. For wegeners, be careful, some of these medications they list are great for healthy people but for a wegeners patient they may trigger disease. This happened to me and I nearly died from the flare. Synergistic Medications for HPA Axis Suppression was the key for me.

Lethargy and fatigue is part of this pred sickness and I'm not sure if there is difference between lethargy and fatigue. It's a big topic obviously not just "fatigue" so I apologize but certainly interrelated.

Differentiating between Wegeners Fatigue and Medication Fatigue is important. I treat the two very differently.
T

[Birdie]

Maybe your doctor will be able to determine if the Fatigue and Psych Issues are Prednisone side effects

Ok, sorry to be less than serious. At high dose, above 40mg, pred made me way wackyer than normal. Wacky has always been my normal, I don't usually do serious very well even in stressful situations. I take things seriously but maintain perspective. Most people seem to freak out in common situations like a minor traffic accident. Geeeze, put it in perspective! So your car has a little dent. Nobody got hurt and everybody has insurance. Go to lunch with the guy who hit you, don't scream and yell at him!!!

So that's me, normally... Predsinone doesn't make me lose my mind and start screaming and yelling. It makes me explain why I'm not screaming and yelling, in perverse detail, until others want to run away screaming.

[Kvincent13]

Predsinone doesn't make me lose my mind and start screaming and yelling. It makes me explain why I'm not screaming and yelling, in perverse detail, until others want to run away screaming.

Prednisone does near the exact same to me, but then when they run away or don't understand why I'm talking so fast, the roid rage sets in. It's a pleasant blend of both. I call it prednihyde.

[Green Grass & High Tides]

"Three days after starting the first prednisone cycle, the patient became, as she described it, “higher than a kite.” She recalls being unable to sleep, lacking impulse control, and being inappropriately humorous. Her mind was flooded with unrelated thoughts, and her thinking became so disorganized that she was unable to drive." - from a 2014 paper in the American Journal of Psychiatry on Adverse Consequences of Glucocorticoids. Read the case study on page 2 or 3. She doesn't have wegs but is on cytoxan and pred. Cortisol levels can have a great deal to do with fatigue and is directly related to the prednisone damage described in the link above. I believe HPA Axis disruption like this hinders my wegeners tx and has been causing some of my fatigue even the years I was mostly off medications.

Not sure about Prednihyde, but I was telling some pretty inappropriate jokes there for a bit and then laughing hysterically, uproariously, before a sudden violent rage would settle in; an hour later I'd be slumped over for 12 hours straight too weak to interact, too jacked up to sleep, lethargic, fatigued. Brain damage. Steroids. Medication Fatigue. Treatable.

Wegeners Fatigue... who knows?

[Birdie]

"Not sure about Prednihyde, but I was telling some pretty inappropriate jokes there for a bit and then laughing hysterically, uproariously, before a sudden violent rage would settle in; an hour later I'd be slumped over for 12 hours straight too weak to interact, too jacked up to sleep, lethargic, fatigued. Brain damage. Steroids. Medication Fatigue. Treatable.

Dude, (sorry, 70's kid here)

I feel like I've been locked up in the Cuckoos nest. It's OK tho because it's where I belong. Apparently. I only had a sleep problem for a few weeks and instead of anger I get frustrated, otherwise same-same. Also I get what I think of as mental tunnel vision. Call it analosity? Can't let go of a thought until you think it into the ground about ten times over? That's analosity.

Now, everybody who smokes (cigarettes that is) raise your hand. OK, the rest can stop reading now. Next time a doctor (nurse, hospital janitor, etc.) starts lecturing you about smoking just repeat these words: "Your SCP is showing". They will likely ignore you and continue the lecture. Wait one or two seconds and say: "Your SCP is showing." Rinse and repeat until they finally ask what you're talking about, at which point you say: "Your SCP is showing, don't tell me you've never been diagnosed?" You get (yes, I know from vast experience in this exact scenario) a puzzeld look which is your que to take over and run the show. "Seriously, you've never been diagnosed before? A case as bad as yours and you don't even know you've got it?" You have to play it by ear from here on but the intent is to stop them wasting half of YOUR appointment, every appointment. However the discussion goes, however long you have to play the game before you finally get their attention, it ends by telling them SCP is Smoking Cessation Psychosis, and they've got it bad, and I'd appreciate it if they would not waste my precious time with them. I've dumped about ten doctors who would not stop, ever. I'm better off without a doctor like that, they're brainwashed robots and no good to me at all.

My wife was refused care by several doctors, they would not even take an appointment because she smoked and it was one of the first questions she was asked on the phone.