All Puffed Up

I'm just going to say it: I am a puffball, a marshmallow. My face is much rounder and fluffier than an oval shaped face really has any right to be. Look at this: 

Here I am, on Mothers Day, with my absolutely gorgeous baby girl. The decision to share the shot in black and white was carefully curated so that you'd notice the smiles, not the delivery mechanism that used to be my face and is now a cartoon iteration of it. 

Why is my face so round, you ask, and why can't I get over it? Good questions. Fair questions. Somewhat easy questions, too - at least on the surface. 

My face is round and pie-like because of steroids, which I've been gobbling down obediently since the middle of April, when my medical team realized that my pneumonia actually was radiation pneumonitis - a result of radiation treatments I had in February. Just between you and me, I'm getting a little tired of taking them. The steroids, I mean.

Don't get me wrong -  I was and AM happy and grateful to have a clear route back to wellness. But wow. Steroids are sort of horrible. It's not just the puffy face syndrome - and lest you think I'm exaggerating the difference between my real face and my steroid face, look at this picture from April 8:
Aw, look! I had a nose. A chin! I had A NECK. I even had cheekbones (and I also still had my favorite grey Fendi leather-wrapped sunglasses, now that I am reminded of it...they currently are out of commission, with a broken arm, but I'm not giving up on them. Can you imagine? Taken out by a broken arm after all they've done for me over the last two years?), for the sake of all that is holy and good!!  Alas, no longer. 

Yep, steroids are sort of sh*tty. I'm just going to be honest. They do help me breathe, and I am getting better, and so I know I shouldn't complain and I shouldn't be vain (that...that my friends is the fodder for an entirely separate blog entry...series of entries...series of blogs! The conundrum of vanity among the chronically ill...and now my most faithful  readers are checking out the double entendre that is the title of this blog entry and chuckling)...but ugh. I digress. 

The steroids don't just puff up my face. They puff up my whole body, and especially my midriff and belly area - a symptom that gets worse and worse as the day wears on, so that by the time the sun goes down, my shirt - hell, my SKIN - feels like it has shrunk three sizes and all of my insides seem to be jostling and fighting to make it to my bodily center, my place of certainty and certitude. Thanks, loyal organs and membranes and muscles and whatever else is busily migrating around and swelling up or what have you - thank you for cheerily reminding me that I'm alive - thank you, honestly, for all the support, but please, as you were. Get back to your beds and stay there for a while. Because I CAN BARELY BREATHE RIGHT NOW! 

The irony, of course, of the situation does not escape me. After all, the whole point of the steroids is so that I can breathe. But alas, in this case, the cure has created (as it so often does) its own little ecology of problems.  

The whole breathing thing is especially problematic when these steroid induced side effects meet up for tea and crackers with my other fun, fluffy friend that has been around for a while - edema - which comes and goes as it pleases, leaving me and my jeans bewildered (what size will fit today? I never know. It's such a fucking mystery...I mean, an adventure...an eye-watering and most  excellent adventure...) and, sometimes, my feet suddenly too fat to fit into my sneakers. So sad when this happens, as it did yesterday. My gorgeous, comfy, perfect sneakers that I love so much...I haven't loved a pair of sneaks like this since my Tretorn-obsessed 80's: 

             Hi guys! 

Sigh. And then there's the restlessness, and the inability to sleep that steroids bring along to the party, too, just for fun. At this point, I just want to know...is it going to go away soon? The pie face and the puff? How long does it take for steroid side effects to wear off? I refuse to look it up, because...because WHAT IF THE SYMPTOMS DON'T GO AWAY? 

If they don't, please don't tell me. I really don't think I could stand to know right now.  


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