I take the Corticosteroid Prednisone to help treat my IBD, Moderate/Severe Ulcerative Colitis (Pancolitis). In this video, I discuss my personal experience with taking the steroid Prednisone, including a small recap of my journey with UC (Diagnosis, Hospital, etc.), the efficacy of Prednisone on my health condition, as well as my experience with the side effects of taking a higher dosage of corticosteroids for a prolonged period of time.
So yeah my uh my hair’s falling out a little bit i’ve got some new acne going on and uh my face is ever so slightly morphine into a chipmunk hey team what’s up my name is austin and two months ago i was diagnosed with moderate to severe pan ulcerative colitis and in this video i’m going to be talking about my experience with taking the corticosteroid prednisone
Basically what my timeline was what i feel the efficacy of taking steroid has been as well as some of the side effects that have been lots and lots of fun so stay tuned and if you want to know more about my uc journey you can check out my channel or click on the playlist link in the description down below and of course if you’re also in club ulcerative colitis
And you’ve been dealing with the effects of steroids either currently or in the past leave a comment and share your story it’s always really cool to know that you’re not alone in this community i’ve found so far so definitely do that anyways corticosteroid drugs such as prednisone are generally used to treat conditions including but not limited to rheumatoid
Arthritis ibd asthma allergies etc unfortunately they do not have any performance enhancing qualities so my big dreams of coming out of this into remission totally shredded were kind of dashed early on ripped for remission is no more a corticosteroid suppresses both the immune system and inflammation which of course is ideal for ulcerative colitis because you
Know there’s ulcers in the colon there’s lots of inflammation and the immune system is mistakenly attacking its own cells so that’s why we’re going to use the steroid unfortunately since steroids affect your whole body and not just the isolated area that you want it to affect there is an entire laundry list of side effects that get increasingly more common and
Severe the higher dose you’re on and the the longer period that you’re on that dosage so i was having symptoms of like minor ulcerative colitis for quite a while before a proper diagnosis but in october 2020 um i got and it just completely obliterated my stomach and it’s it’s my theory that it altered my immune system enough to where it would turn my condition
And my symptoms just to like 11 on the dial and it landed me in the hospital for a lovely 12 days with just i was i was in pretty bad condition this is when i started on the steroids like while i was in the hospital it started first with a intravenous supply of soluble at 30 milligrams and then i moved to the oral prednisone a little bit later and for the record
I was in a pretty critical condition when i was in the hospital to the point where unfortunately the steroid treatment didn’t even get me back to the safe zone so i had to go on a rescue treatment of infliximab or remicade which i ended up failing anyway later but that’s another video entirely i did however end up stabilizing enough to where i could go home and i
Continued on the regiment of 30 milligrams of prednisone every single day all right so now let’s talk about efficacy basically how well have the steroids been in helping me manage my uc symptoms unfortunately at any dosage they have not brought me into a state of remission so basically i was still having five to ten bowel movements a day with you know pain in the
Abdomen with cramps and blood and just not not fun stuff however i will say that they offered the most symptom relief during the day so i would wake up really early in the mornings probably like five or six to take like the first dose and that would help me out through the rest of the morning and by the afternoon i could go anywhere from like three to five hours
Without a bowel movement and it did reduce the cramping and the pain however it’s the nights when the steroid was kind of wearing off still that things got pretty ugly again my mornings historically with uc have been pretty rough and so the steroids really only helped during the day so overall helpful but not a solution more like a a daily band-aid on what is a
Bullet wound that i’m still working on currently but in a much better position with now all right so now part two all of the fun side effects that i have experienced and the first one on the list is going to be like inability to sleep restlessness insomnia now i experienced this one right away with the steroids when i was in the hospital i just had a terrible
Terrible time sleeping these these drugs kept me awake like wide awake all throughout the night i honestly i don’t know how my body rallied through my time in the hospital because there’s no way i got more than an hour of solid sleep throughout any of the nights after leaving the hospital i continued on the 30 milligrams of prednisone and the sleeplessness
Continued as well for for several weeks i would have to say now it’s hard to figure out you know what was keeping me up at night was it having to go to the bathroom every single hour with you know pain or was it the steroid i would say that it’s definitely a mix of both obviously but the steroid part was kind of just like the laying awake restless with anxiety
And just like the inability to fall asleep and so that’s that was a that’s a rough part of it so the second side effect i’m going to talk about that i’ve been dealing with since kind of the beginning has been the the mood swings and the short temper and the frustration and like roid rage basically sometimes now this one has always been a little confusing to me
Because i have a baseline you know temperament that’s pretty chill and emotionally level and so to to feel myself getting so angered so quickly was kind of bizarre like i found myself wanting to just like punch things when i was minorly inconvenienced and you know i just felt really there were some days where i was just i was just mad like i was just so frustrated
And i would be really short-tempered with my family like really short responses and kind of almost like emotionally distant in a way there was even one day we were like unloading gallons of water from the car and the bag had broke a little bit and i just grabbed the jug instinctively and i just i threw it on the ground and i broke it and i would never react like
That not being on steroids and so um you know i still sometimes get the the shortness of temper but um by now i’m managing it better i guess like just knowing that okay you know you’re you’re frustrated or angry or short-tempered because of the steroids not because of you so we’re going to hop back to the timeline a second before i go over the the final symptoms
Because this is relevant now what happened next was a mix of me failing remicade uh being on this lower steroid dosage and also um getting a c diff infection all at once and so all the progress that i had made up to this point kind of just went and i ended up back in the hospital for another seven days right around new year’s which was which was awesome and um
After getting out i was put on 40 milligrams of prednisone every single day and that is a lot and i experienced new symptoms with that including but not limited to the hair loss the acne and the moon face so basically these aren’t that bad they are just simply aesthetic and i’m not too worried about it because i’m not seeing a lot of people right now and i’m pretty
Isolated because i’m on an immunosuppressant however it is kind of annoying to have your hair falling out and to have acne like you’re in high school again and also to have your face swell up a little bit i think it’s going down now because i’m currently tapering tapering off the 40 again but still it’s just like the heroine is tough though because i’ve always
Been paranoid that i’m losing my hair i i don’t have any evidence of it prior to this but just to be like brushing my hair and to just have the brush be filled with hair is just so terrible because that’s like one of my biggest fears is to like go bald literally it’s like coming out i can see it as i run my hands through my hair it’s terrifying i’m terrified and
So i’ll probably end up getting a buzz cut and become a hat person for a while or maybe a buzz cut person i don’t know i my hair is kind of my brand so i’ve never shaved it down very very short so we’ll see all right so closing thoughts uh corticosteroids certainly serve a medical purpose and for me they did offer some daily relief of symptoms side effects are
Lame that is certainly the case and i wish my ulcerative colitis would be more responsive to these steroids so i didn’t have to go on you know more intense autoimmune treatments but hey c’est la vie i am getting better now so that’s what’s important if you got value out of this video leave a like leave a comment if you’re part of team ulcerative colitis and make
Sure if you want to watch more of my videos on my journey with this with this autoimmune chronic disease then you can check out my channel or check out the playlist in the link down below my name is austin this is outer space productions happy healing if you’ve got you’ve see and we will see you next time
Transcribed from video
Corticosteroid Side Effects and Efficacy (Prednisone) | My IBD Journey with Ulcerative Colitis By Austin Perkins
