Book Review: Revised and Updated – Coping with Prednisone*

 

* and other cortisone-related medicines It may work miracles, but how do you handle the side effects?
May is Lupus Awareness Month! How Will You Spread Awareness?
A guide to the potential nutritional, emotional, and physical side effects of taking long-term cortisone related medicines. Co-authored by a Eugenia Zukerman, world renowned flutist who was prescribed prednisone for a rare lung disease, and her sister, a specialist physician, this book describes Ms. Zukerman’s experience with this treatment and provides helpful information on the management of the side effects.


Although this book is chock full of medical and even scientific information, as a patient I found it easy to read. I was not overwhelmed by the information, but instead I felt empowered to be an educated partner with my doctor in my healthcare. I wish this book was written when I was first diagnosed with lupus and when prescribed prednisone.
There are many reasons why a patient may be directed to take the medication prednisone. I like that this book focuses on the medication and it’s side effects and does not confuse the issue by talking about different diseases. Prednisone is a wonderful drug that can help many cases, but it comes with serious side effects that one must be prepared to tackle as well. I feel that this book is an essential tool for anyone who is using this drug. I found the chapters on exercises, recipes and diet and even a question and answer chapter between the two author/ sisters a delightful informative addition.
This book has the same important information that was located in the first book- but is now updated with current information. butyoudontlooksick.com has written a review of the first book and it can be located here. I would recommend anyone taking the medication prednisone to purchase this book.

Article written by Christine Miserandino, © 2007 butyoudontlooksick.com
Paperback: 256 pages
Publisher: St. Martin’s Griffin; Revised edition (December 10, 2007)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0312375603

  • I wish someone had given me this book along with the prescription when I had pneumonia in 1995. I needed it for my lungs and it may have helped save my life. But the common side effect “there may be some delusions” I can report as “Full-on hallucinations as sensory tangible as reality.”
    Waking dream states that made sense in terms of symbolism as if they were dreams — and were indistinguishable from reality except for common sense. I knew that I had not turned into a 2,000 pound white whale beached and unable to breathe. I was for real unable to breathe with a stress asthma attack and in retrospect had a heck of a chronic fatigue collapse on top of it. It took half a dozen police to actually carry me because I was so limp when that exhausted.
    I knew that I was actually in jail. I knew that Stephen King was not actually my cellmate, but he was good company anyway.
    Prednisone was what convinced me that I didn’t miss anything in the sixties by not taking LSD. I can get the same thing by getting some sleep without any legal repercussions — or risks of getting arrested for suspected drug use for having a bad reaction to a prescription drug.
    I kept trying to tell them “I think someone spiked my drink with a hallucinogen, someone thought it’d be funny to get me stoned, I don’t do hallucinogens but I’m hallucinating.” No one believed me.
    Oh man do I feel sorry for anyone that prank gets pulled on too — I know people who’ve done it and they don’t realize what it can do to a person’s life.
    Robert