My first encounter with steroids was post surgical, last summer. The second was just these past four weeks or so. They have a deserved reputation for affecting mood, and for appetite enhancement.

The mood swings for me are the worst. I have been nearly suicidal, I've been manic, I've been angry and aggressive, I've been prone to cry at the least reason, I've been unreasonable and monomaniacal. That whole business about the water glasses only happened because I was taking prednisone. Please, please, please don't think I that I really care all that much what I drink my tap water out of most days.

I hadn't fully appreciated that it was the prednisone doing this to me last summer, since I could have expected the same emotional reactions simply from having such a major surgery. But the way I felt last summer is the way I feel now. It's just that I have more energy to express my mania now.

I think the aggression part is the scariest to me. I do not go around kicking puppies and stray children. But when I kicked that door last week, it was because I fully, for about three seconds, wanted to see the door break. That's what prednisone does to you.

Appetite might be secondary, but it's also a major change. This didn't affect me at all last summer, and my guess is that having a new liver killed my appetite more than the prednisone could jump start things again. But now ... now I wake up at two in the morning with tummy grumbles. Now I finish two helpings worth of meat and then look for cookies to eat. Now my stomach grumbles when the cookies run out.

I've gained nearly two pounds a week on the steroids, because they increase your appetite while decreasing your metabolism. Your body wants to put on weight with these things, both fat and muscle. That's why body builders abuse them. The really do encourage your body to bulk up with appropriate exercise. With the bum neck though, I'm not exercising, just bulking.

A short course of low dose shouldn't hit you much, if at all, but they hit me with a large dose at first to try and control all the swelling that was happening at the nerve root. It worked too; I was almost totally out of pain two days after I started the pred. But I'm glad to be ending it now.