Since my last post, the fluid in my knees seems to be slightly improved; however, there is now muscle soreness going up and down my leg from one of my knees.  A friend said that it probably means the knee-joint is moving around a bit and the muscles around it are trying to hold it together.  The weird part is that it is not the knee I injured recently that is hurting the most, it’s the other one!  Sometimes the soreness goes higher up my leg and sometimes it’s more localized near the knee.  Very weird.  I’ve also noticed that I’ve become more forgetful over the last few months.  I was thinking that I shouldn’t be that forgetful at age 49 – it kind of worried me.  I’ve started making a point of spending some time each day playing some timed word games to try to stimulate my brain a little.  When I was checking back over some of the possible side effects of long-term prednisone use, I saw that forgetfulness and sometimes having trouble finishing a thought are listed as side effects!  Wheww!  That was actually a relief!  I had forgotten (lol) that it could be related to the steroids! 🙂  I seem to be a little less short of breath than  I was at the worst, but still not back to normal.  I’m definitely feeling weaker as far as my muscles go.  I’m not sure if I’m actually doing less physically because I don’t feel as well and it’s all harder and that’s why or if that is also just par for the course. It doesn’t seem to me that I’m being significantly less active, but I’m not sure.  I’m definitely noticing that I’m having some ups and downs with the emotions, too.  That is also a side effect (in addition to the ups and downs most women have regularly anyway, and women around my age already have more of that so it’s kind of like a triple whammy!).  I weighed again the other day, expecting to be back up to my all time high since I was feeling so bloated, but actually I’m down 10 lbs from that, so that was good news!  Still 20 lbs over my “norm” but better than I was expecting.  Unfortunately, it’s time to swap out summer for winter clothes here in Minnesota and most of my long pants are not fitting me.  Guess I’ll have to get a couple of pairs of prednisone pants!  I have to keep reminding myself that there’s a good reason for all of this!  The doctor made a point of emphasizing to me that it’s important to commit to the whole 6 months of treatment in order to receive the benefit.  I’m guessing there are patients who get tired of all of the side effects and decide to quit taking the drug.  I certainly don’t want all of this to be for nothing.  Counting the time I was on higher doses trying to recover hearing, I’ve been on prednisone now for  over 4 months.  The official plan is for me to be on this dose through the end of January, then taper off.  Not sure how slow the taper will be, but I’m about half way now if we continue with this course of action.  I see the doctor again for a follow-up on Friday.

On a different note, I had a wonderful day yesterday!  Chet was off work from both jobs for the entire day on a Saturday!  That is rare!  One of our closes friends just had his 50th birthday, so we made it a date day with him and his wife and had a wonderful time together.  We went to the movies and I got to try out another  type of captioning system. There is a theater chain in our area that has just added a system by Sony for their theaters.  It was really cool.  There is a unit you wear around your neck and they program it for you to the theater where you are seeing your movie.  Then they give you a pair of glasses, and when you are in the theater, the captions appear in the glasses!  The picture was great, the captions meant I didn’t miss much of anything (except when I was letting everyone try them out so they could see what it was like!).  Overall, this was great.  Comparing it to the CaptiView I talked about in an earlier post, I’d say I might like the CaptiView a little better.  The Sony glasses did skip the captions several times.  Not for long, but there were short gaps from time to time.  The words move around anytime you move your head, so you have to be pretty still or get used to them moving.  I found a position where the words appeared to me above the picture and that seemed to be the most comfortable.  One thing that is really great about this is that it has opened up the movie options.  Before these theaters added the Sony glasses, the local theaters generally only had one or two movie choices that offered captioning and there are only some theaters that do that.  With this addition, the glasses can be used in most of their theaters, so it basically gave me the option to watch most any movie out, which was great.  I also saw some info on this system and it says you can use a neckloop with it, so I’ll bring mine along next time and try that out!  After the movie we went to a steakhouse that I’ve never been to and had a great meal, then headed over to our friend’s house and visited for a while, then watched another movie.  I had to laugh because usually movies at home are easy to caption, but this particular one was an older movie and it wasn’t an option.  I got a nice little nap in while they watched it! LOL  Fun day.  Thanks for humoring me today while I talk about this stuff!  I hope I don’t sound like I’m complaining.  I don’t mean it to be that.  I’m just recording what’s going on for me to have a record of and also for those who want to stay up on it.  Hope everyone had a great weekend!