Dexamethasone, mon amour
Oct. 29th, 2011 05:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
heliopsisI got the stitches out yesterday (Friday) at noon, and it looks pretty good. There's still a ridge along the side of my face, but it's right up against the hairline. I expect once my hair grows back and the incision heals a little more, you'll never know it was there. I'm still kind of inflamed on the side of my face, though. Since I stopped taking the steroid, I have definitely had both more pain and less energy. It's disappointing, because I was doing so well; but it turns out that much of what I was experiencing was a false sense of health thanks to the steroid.
I asked the nurse practitioner who removed my stitches about my burst of creativity, and whether it might have been related to the steroid. "Oh yes," she said, "it has quite a variety of side effects. Some people get very anxious when they wake up in the night, it's nice that you found it such a positive experience." I also read in Wikipedia that a novelist claimed one of his works was written under the influence of the same steroid.
On the one hand, I'm disappointed: I wanted this creativity to be entirely autochthonous, merely unleashed by an unusual circumstance; to know that it was a side effect makes me wonder whether anything I produced was worthwhile. I know the math I worked through amounted to something, because it's math, you can tell if it's right. So I know my critical faculties were not dimmed, I was able to self-correct. I haven't re-read anything I wrote yet, I shall have to do that. On the other hand, wouldn't it be wonderful if I could turn on that sort of creative energy like a switch! A little pill, and bam! I'm up in the morning, writing. And if I need to save my energy for the office, I can skip the pill and sleep. It sounds too convenient, but I shall give it a try one of these days.
It also occurs to me that perhaps I can cultivate the attitude of enthusiasm I wrote about on Thursday, that capacity for pursuing my idea uncritically. Maybe that's what I need more than anything, and maybe I can do that without drugs.
I asked the nurse practitioner who removed my stitches about my burst of creativity, and whether it might have been related to the steroid. "Oh yes," she said, "it has quite a variety of side effects. Some people get very anxious when they wake up in the night, it's nice that you found it such a positive experience." I also read in Wikipedia that a novelist claimed one of his works was written under the influence of the same steroid.
On the one hand, I'm disappointed: I wanted this creativity to be entirely autochthonous, merely unleashed by an unusual circumstance; to know that it was a side effect makes me wonder whether anything I produced was worthwhile. I know the math I worked through amounted to something, because it's math, you can tell if it's right. So I know my critical faculties were not dimmed, I was able to self-correct. I haven't re-read anything I wrote yet, I shall have to do that. On the other hand, wouldn't it be wonderful if I could turn on that sort of creative energy like a switch! A little pill, and bam! I'm up in the morning, writing. And if I need to save my energy for the office, I can skip the pill and sleep. It sounds too convenient, but I shall give it a try one of these days.
It also occurs to me that perhaps I can cultivate the attitude of enthusiasm I wrote about on Thursday, that capacity for pursuing my idea uncritically. Maybe that's what I need more than anything, and maybe I can do that without drugs.
