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Feb. 8th, 2026 02:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ysobelThe second, longer run of prednisone seems to have restored most if not all of the jaw mobility (yay for being able to eat bagels again) but it also has given me some fairly impressive insomnia.
Monday I went to bed around 11pm, and spent hours in the "kinda half-asleep" stage, where I have my eyes closed but I'm not really either asleep or awake, and if I listen to something I will blip out for a minute in some sort of otherwise-invisible microsleep so I can't listen to anything new. Occasionally I'd open my eyes to check the time, before going back to trying. I've had weirdass nights where I'm still not fully asleep by 3-4am, which means I know I'll be tired the next day.
Monday night, I didn't get any REM-stage sleep until after 8am. And I was awake again by 9am, and half awake until 10:30 when my caregiver comes. So probably 30-45 minutes of good sleep. And that after a weekend where I got up early both days for local restaurant grand opening events.
Tuesday I crashed early, going to bed at 9pm. And I didn't fall asleep properly until after 7am. At this point it occurred to me that it could be medication, so I looked up prednisone side effects, and hey guess what's on the list ...
It's been gradually getting better each day, probably in good part to being on the taper. (Tomorrow is my last day.) Last night I had multiple dream sessions, and I think my first one was 'only' after 6am. ...of course my brain decided I needed Saw-level explicit gore horror dreams, but whatever.
#
The other thing of note this week is finally getting into the dermatologist for the Suspicious Blob on my ear. I forget when I first noticed it, and I'm pretty sure I brought it up to my main doctor several times, but she thought it was just benign. But it's been growing, and then in December it got randomly bleedy, and my audiologist sent a note to my doctor about "a lesion on the ear".
Dermatologist (who is awesome I love her) agreed it looked sus, and chopped it off. (The blob, not the ear.) Top edge of ear is awkward to bandaid, but if you do it right with the right shape bandage you can get an elf ear effect, woo.
Pathology came back as basal cell carcinoma, which I had a spot of on my nose in 2016. BSC is one of the least scary types of cancer: slow moving, easy to treat if you get it early, and nowhere near as scary as melanoma. (And 'treat' is generally just an outpatient surgical procedure, no radiation or chemo.) I'll be having a Mohs surgery in a bit over a month to make sure all the cancer cells got removed, and I'm not really worried.
...except for the bit where I have to get up at at least 6am, eww.
Monday I went to bed around 11pm, and spent hours in the "kinda half-asleep" stage, where I have my eyes closed but I'm not really either asleep or awake, and if I listen to something I will blip out for a minute in some sort of otherwise-invisible microsleep so I can't listen to anything new. Occasionally I'd open my eyes to check the time, before going back to trying. I've had weirdass nights where I'm still not fully asleep by 3-4am, which means I know I'll be tired the next day.
Monday night, I didn't get any REM-stage sleep until after 8am. And I was awake again by 9am, and half awake until 10:30 when my caregiver comes. So probably 30-45 minutes of good sleep. And that after a weekend where I got up early both days for local restaurant grand opening events.
Tuesday I crashed early, going to bed at 9pm. And I didn't fall asleep properly until after 7am. At this point it occurred to me that it could be medication, so I looked up prednisone side effects, and hey guess what's on the list ...
It's been gradually getting better each day, probably in good part to being on the taper. (Tomorrow is my last day.) Last night I had multiple dream sessions, and I think my first one was 'only' after 6am. ...of course my brain decided I needed Saw-level explicit gore horror dreams, but whatever.
#
The other thing of note this week is finally getting into the dermatologist for the Suspicious Blob on my ear. I forget when I first noticed it, and I'm pretty sure I brought it up to my main doctor several times, but she thought it was just benign. But it's been growing, and then in December it got randomly bleedy, and my audiologist sent a note to my doctor about "a lesion on the ear".
Dermatologist (who is awesome I love her) agreed it looked sus, and chopped it off. (The blob, not the ear.) Top edge of ear is awkward to bandaid, but if you do it right with the right shape bandage you can get an elf ear effect, woo.
Pathology came back as basal cell carcinoma, which I had a spot of on my nose in 2016. BSC is one of the least scary types of cancer: slow moving, easy to treat if you get it early, and nowhere near as scary as melanoma. (And 'treat' is generally just an outpatient surgical procedure, no radiation or chemo.) I'll be having a Mohs surgery in a bit over a month to make sure all the cancer cells got removed, and I'm not really worried.
...except for the bit where I have to get up at at least 6am, eww.
no subject
Date: 2026-02-09 01:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-02-09 02:51 am (UTC)FWIW, I know we've tried this before, but I am in town full time now so we might try again to meet up.