I. Hate. Prednisone.

So I've had this pinched nerve since April 23rd, right? My right sciatic nerve. It has not been fun. I still don't have full control of my right leg. There was a lot of time spent at the beginning trying to get the pain medication to the right place so that I was at least comfortable. I have been living at the chiropractor's office. X-rays were taken. Doctors were consulted.

It's been all kinds of fun. ::massive eye roll::

Before she would clear me to get an MRI--because my chiropractor is fairly certain that the root cause is a bit of disc bulge--my regular doctor wanted me to go see her in person. Okay, fine, that makes sense. The annoying thing is that trying to get appointments right now is like trying to catch a lubed-up, over-caffeinated weasel, so I had to wait a couple of weeks...and then make the MRI appointment another couple of weeks out...you can see where this is going. In the meantime, my doctor put me on a tapered course of Prednisone to try to target the inflammation and hopefully get this whole thing more of a jump start on healing itself. 

I was not thrilled about this.

I have had Prednisone once before, when I was a teenager, and I remember hating it because it made me balloon up. Right now, I'm a dancer who can't dance, and the thought of also having to look like a walrus because a pill made me that way wasn't exactly thrilling. However, the arguments for doing the course of the medication were far more compelling than the ones not to, so off to the pharmacy I went for my twelve days worth of gradually-decreasing-in-strength corticosteroids.

I have not slept properly in almost two weeks. I have had no appetite to speak of for that same length of time. I have had an extremely reduced capacity for concentration. I have been existing on an emotional roller coaster so rickety it makes those sketchy carnival rides look like Dumbo at Disneyland. I spent the majority of the first eight days in Level One Panic Attack mode, where I was essentially vibrating the whole time.

But nothing, NOTHING, was worse than Thursday. It was abysmal. I hit a low I haven't hit in years. It was the non-stop anxiety buzz with this...just heavy, heavy depression. I felt like my body was going to physically fly apart if I didn't somehow manage to contain it, while at the same time I was inexorably weighed down. I wanted to stop existing. (Not die, there's a difference.) The physical weight of it was like a cement blanket. Everything was hopeless. I felt dead inside--like there wasn't anything left of me. I was a shell. Hollow. And hollow things break under pressure. All I knew was that I wanted it to stop. It needed to stop, or I was going to break. The anxiety buzz was shaking my atoms and trying to send them flying while the low was sitting on me like the metaphorical 800-pound gorilla, and the only thing that kept me from spiraling out of control was my constant mantra of, "It's the meds, this will pass. It's the meds, this will pass. It's the meds, this will pass..."

And it did pass. I had enough work to keep me going during the day, then I had appointments and dance in the evening, and I forced myself to be a human and do all of those things, and I felt better for it. But you know something? That low?   

That low used to be my baseline.

I recognized it immediately. I existed in that state, continuously, for years. To experience it again was a fucking eye-opener. I honestly have no idea how I'm still alive. I've always said that existing is my biggest act of rebellion. It was always mostly a joke.

Except it's not.