No, I won't look like Arnold Schwarzeneggar ...

... has been my response to several people when they heard I was taking steroids.

So let's deal with the biggest source of confusion right away.

• Body-builders and people who want to build muscle-mass take anabolic steroids.
• People with inflammatory conditions including CLIPPERS take corticosteroids.

It turns out taking corticosteroids can result in weight gain but mostly as fat around the face, neck and stomach, which would probably make me look even less like Arnold Schwarzneggar. On the plus side I'm unlikely to suffer from "Roid Rage" or testicular atrophy either. Phew.

WE Ask The Questions

Now that I've got over my acute CLIPPERS symptoms and having hit a stable patch supported by various pills there's been some more time for reflection. That is reflection on the state of CLIPPERS rather than the reflection of a few months ago which without, wanting to be melodramatic, was more focussed on questions like "Will I make it as far as Christmas?".

Thanks Sis!

Snapshot of a card I recently received.
http://www.edwardmonkton.com/
http://www.reallygood.uk.com/

Read other articles in this series at Living With CLIPPERS.


Living With CLIPPERS by Bill Crum is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

A Not So Curious Case of CLIPPERS?

This month another CLIPPERS case study appeared, a report about a 56 year old man who I'll call "Sheldon" for ease of discussion. Although these single subject studies are limited in the sense that small numbers of cases don't allow general conclusions about CLIPPERS to be drawn, they are still of interest given the relatively small number of published reports to date. To me the interest in the recent report from Biotti et al is that this case is unremarkable and seems to fit fairly well with the bulk of the other reports - and with my own experience.