The Evil Dex.Kevin Drum
I’ll bet you’re tired of hearing about COVID-19, aren’t you? What you’d really like is to hear someone griping about some other disease. I’m here to help.
Back in 2014, when I went through my first round of chemo, part of the treatment was dexamethasone. The dose was 20 mg every Friday, and on Sunday I would crash as the dex wore off. This usually happened in the afternoon and lasted a couple of hours. I would fall hard asleep during the first quarter of some football game and then wake up in the fourth quarter.
Today, I still take dex. The dose is 4 mg every Friday and on Sunday I crash. For about eight hours. I fall asleep around 10 am and wake up a little before dinner time. Then on Monday I do the same for two or three hours.
Plus I take a second dose on Monday, so I crash for eight hours on Wednesday and another few hours on Thursday.
Altogether, then, I spend something like 20+ daytime hours in a deep dex stupor these days even though I’m taking a fraction of the dose I used to take. This is ridiculous. On the bright side, that’s 20 hours when I’m not tempted to leave the house. So there’s that.
