Pituatary gland symptoms and conditions

I am a 19-year-old female pre-med student who has been taking this nasty drug for exacly 1 year now.... The amount I am on continues to change, for my disease keeps returning and leaving remission. I finally get down to 10mg from 40mg, and have to go back up when symptoms return!!! This is SO discouraging. The worst part is, no one understands the physical and emotional agony this drug brings on. I'm 19 and feel like I'm 90. My body aches, my weight is constantly fluctuating, I bruise from simply being poked (being a clumsy person, I look like I am beat!!), my bones feel as if they are about to break, and I am SEVERELY despressed. Being in college and taking rigorous classes, this is just too much for me to handle anymore... My 5-year relationship with the love of my life/best friend is falling apart because of my horrible mood swings.. don't blame him for leaving. I feel as if this drug has ruined my life more than the disease itself...Does ANYONE know if one's body and mind returns to "normal" after FINALLY being off this drug??? I pray to God the answer is yes... I would appreciate someone's reply and/or insight, because my Dr. fails to tell me about ANY side effects until I mention something. PLEASE REPLY!!!

I have been reading the posts with great interest, and as a frequent prednisone flyer, I have a Canadian perspective that may or may not be helpful. (Please be patient as typing and prednisone don't mix with me :>)

But back to the point. During my years of prednisone useage, I have always been told that long term prednisone use shuts down the adrenal glands, not enhances it. Which is why after a period of two weeks,(the time it take for them to shut down approximately, continued use of prednisone takes over what the adrenal glands formally did. (ie. regulate metabolism, and provides resistance to stress; ie. temperature extremes, high altitudes, bleeding, infection, surgery, trauma, dental work and good old stress. It also has the bonus of raising blood pressure if and when a body needs it.) A lot of the side effects I have read come from the prednisone directly, and indirectly from non-functioning adrenal glands. Furthermore, we are told it takes roughly a year (sometimes longer), for full adrenal gland function to come back, and why, if during this time you do need surgery, dental work, or get an infection, or in an accident, it is not uncommon to have to go back on the prednisone until the 'stress' is fixed. The symptoms of low pressure (feeling faint, sweating, dizzy etc.) is usually the first sign that the adrenal glands are not working at full capacity yet.

Knowing all of that, I sincerely wish I had known that if one is depressed, anxious or suffering from panic attacks prednisone compounds the emotional problems greatly. Or
simply creates them as side effects. If you have existing psychological difficulties, sleeping 2 hours in 24, massive, unpredictable mood swings, (for me it was not so much mood
'swings' per se, more like bad, worse, and would someone please put me out of my misery.) For me, I know prednisone turns me into a 'speedfreak'. I can't sit still, can't talk, walk or smoke fast enough. I was very lucky after a stressful last year, and taking 50 mgs of predisone for 4 months, when I finally crashed, I spent 6 weeks in a psych ward basically to
contain me until I had been weaned off of the prednisone. (Ironically enough, it was a year ago tomorrow when I was hopitalized.)

So today I started taking 50 mgs of prednisone, and can already feel my heart and pulse rate excelerating. Fortunately, I no longer have the emotional distress, but during this summer I developed edema (45 pounds in a month), and high blood pressure. Both the doctor who prescribed it and the pharmacist who fill it assured me prednisone does not affect either. It only took about a minute and a half on the 'net to find out that wasn't true, (Everyone who already knew that feel free to giggle and roll your eyes a bit) after spending months working on getting the edema/HBP under 'reasonable' control. (At this point, I eat pizza and my eyes go blurry.) In closing I would be curious if any other readers have edema and/or high blood pressure before taking prednisone, and if/how much/in what way your experience has been in mixing the two.

Thank you.