I have been on prednisone to slow down my immune system building the antibodies that are causing myasthenia gravis, weak muscles. The biggest side effect that is noticeable to others is what is commonly called "moon face" where your face fattens up. I took a before photo and then one after 3 days--don't think it is doing much yet.
 |
| The Rambler is taking prednisone for his Myasthenia Gravis. Can you notice any side effects yet? Before is on the left. |
The gardens have jumped with some great fresh lettuce to pick. We have to get the hoes out. I took the old Cub cadet with the back cultivator and did the pumpkin and squash garden both ways. I planted it so the tractor would drive through up and down the rows, and then cross ways--like the farmers in the old days when they "checked" there corn to cross cultivate.
Went to the Northwest Regional Writers meeting this afternoon after dropping the 91 Olds off at Jensen's garage in Cushing to replace one of the exhaust pipes up front that made driving from Pine Island to Cushing a real noisy ride. He had it done by 5:00 pm.
The writers got a proof copy of the anthology of poems and stories we are planning for this fall. It looks like a good book, even though it is only half there and needs a lot of editing. The 5 proofs cost a total of $20 through Amazon's createpace.com including postage and came in seven days after I sent the file in. The title is being mulled over--titles are the most important thing in getting a person's attention to pick up the book and consider buying it.
We dropped over to the Luck Museum to see Marilyn Berg who started working there this week. The museum is open Monday 1-4, T-F 11-3:30 and Saturday 10-1. The brand new geology of Luck display and rock collections are finally all out and on display. The photos of an old barn in the neighborhood are also on display. Should be an active summer.
The rest of the evening has been spent picking off wood ticks. In Pine Island there are none. Two years ago, due to a single deer with Chronic Wasting Disease, 1000 deer in the area were shot off. The tick count there is zero! I suppose the glut of deer around this area (the sand barrens with 10 miles of woods on the west and the farm fields and pastures on the east) causes so many ticks.
Saturday Margo and I volunteer at the Luck Museum and Sunday we visit Mom for Sunday brunch. Then Margo heads back to Pine Island and then down to her parents for father's day and I head back for another appointment on Thursday at Mayo. They need to keep increasing the prednisone dosage to get rid of my MG, and they want to check to see if they are going too fast. Too fast and my head will blow up rather than just stretch.
Nice to be back in Wisconsin where the ticks, mosquitoes and now deer flies are flourishing. Oh, by the way, we planned to pull my new trailer up north, but getting it out on the road it started swaying back and forth terribly. My guess is one of two things: I loaded it with too little weight on the front or I built it backwards on the axle and wheel set (I got the toe-out forward rather than the toe-in to the front). Tried to get Margo to ride on the tongue while I took it up to 40mph to see if extra weight on the front would help, but she was notably uncooperative. Since she turned 65 last week, she has been real bucky.