Call Congress

I take steroids. And yes, I can tell when baseball players lie about taking steroids, because you can clearly see they have "moonface" (Steroid related swelling, which so far I have managed to avoid, unless Dr. A really ramps them up, as he likes to do on rare occasion).

However, I have not yet developed Phenomenal Skills with any sort of Sporting Equipment. But that doesn't mean that I haven't enjoyed other particularly wonderful side effects.

Most of really unpleasant ones--losing or growing excess hair, for example--I have not had to deal with. Thank God. And I am actually on a fairly low maintenance dose of 10 mg/day. And it does make my joints super-happy. Pre-transplant, my joints were Highly Cranky all the time. (I was totally perturbed when Vioxx went off the market. That was a Miracle Drug. I would have gladly dealt with potential cardiac complications 30 years from now if I could take the Blessed Yellow Pill that got me through today.) So there is something good about it. But they do make one area of life sadly complicated.

This is Shopping For Clothes. Now, while my face is normal size (I think), my stomach is not. Weight gain there is especially prominent when you take steroids, and it's sort of out-of-proportion with the rest of your body. Some girls can look like they are six or seven months pregnant while taking these.

So shopping for jeans, skirts, hose, etc. becomes very interesting. You can get things over your hips, but they don't buckle/zipper/close in any way. I actually look at hose sizes now, and wonder, Hmmm, do I go by what my crazy stomach's size is, or the size of my legs? Do I want them to be too big or too small?

With jeans, if it fits the waist, the butt is huge. So I feel like I am swimming in my jeans.

Yes, I am glad I weight more than the 85 pounds I clocked in at pre-transplant. But geez, I do miss having a proportinate body.