Hey Herbert..how r u ?
One thing for sure....try everything you can before you go that route and even with the compound pharmacy type cortisone..
I take bioidentical estrogen, testosterone and progesterone and 20 mg a day of regular pharmaceutical hydrocortisone.
I have been on the hydrocortisone for about
7 months now and before that I was on 20mg of PREDNISONE for almost 2 yrs. I was completely whipped out and had all the symptoms of polymyalgia rheumatic.
I later learned that there is such a thing as lyme induced polymyalgia rheumatic. It is suer painful and you can't put your feet on the floor or turning your neck is a big deal.
I had no idea I had lyme. I thought all my sickness was Hep C and then more sickness from hep c treatment interferon . so my adrenals where whipped out and brain was not producing enough ACTH.
An endocrinologist put me on hydrocortisone and florinef not knowing about
the lyme. It made me eat like a pig. I remember I drove across country and was stopping at every roadside
open buffet eating everything on the buffet plus ordering a full meal. I was literally inhaling the food down so fast. I ended up getting such swollen legs I finally ditched the florinef. then I tried to drop the cortisone and did all this natural stuff including the hormone replacement bioidenticals but i was falling apart and cracking up.
Eventually I had to take the prednisone jet to get out of bed. It was the prednisone that made the lyme go completely off the charts. I started getting all the near signs and making wearied faces and noises like a chimpanzee. Finally a tick borne specialist and a team f doctors found out I had lyme and every other infection and parasites. There is no doubt the prednisone made it worse.
So I hope you have an acupuncturist near by and can get yourself into there like every week to spark your adrenals back up. It definitely is possible with acupuncture.
There are a lot of lyme people on cortisone and even prednisone because we are s far gone in autoimmune and adrenal stuff. I hope you aren't.
And if anyone is going to prescribe steroids try to get a real endocrinologist that is lyme savvy. Make sure you test your ACTH and your cortisone functions BEFORE playing around with any cortisone so you can get a clear read. Otherwise if you start playing around even with low dose cortisone you will have to do the special stimulation test and take dexamethazone . it is a pain in the neck test.
My adrenals have been shot for years and it ruined my life. You get extremely chemical sensitive when you have no adrenals.
Did you check your ACTH?
Also, like bittentooshy said , if YOUR LYME DOCTOR says you need it then you do. Both my lyme docs said i need it and there is a big difference between prednisone and hydrocortisone. I gained 15 pounds on the prednisone and lost it when i went on the cortisone. But truthfully, I think there is a personality change on the steroids. I never feel the joy in anything anymore and am too aggressive without even realizing it.
Post Edited (bucci) : 3/21/2011 11:25:50 PM (GMT-6)