weird side effects.. please help

i am having some weird side effects at the moment.

i was admitted to the hospital last week for 7 days.  i was put on 200mg a day of hydrocortisone injections. morphine. colifoam. mesalazine 2x a day.  i am now on imuran as well. 50mg 1x day.

i CANNOT sleep AT ALL.

i take my imuran at 8pm with my dinner.  then before bed i take my 2 500mg mesalazine tabs.

i also had to use mouth drops for a thrush infection in my mouth from the steroids (gross).

i lay awake the entire night and cant sleep a wink.  not even doze off for minutes. i see every minute go by.  it seriously sucks. i just wanna go to sleep.

anyone else have this problem?

is it the imuran?

it just started the last 3 days.  no sleep at all until about 6.30am til about 7.30am and thats it.

its driving me mad.

-----

and now for the other issue...

my right ear gets plugged up and NOTHING will clear it.

everything echos

i dont have any sinus issues or ear infection. it just happened yesterday and now i can hear my breathing vibrate my head.

this is driving me double mad...

any ideas???

You poor thing! You certainly are going through a lot at the moment.

I'd say it is the steroids - your injections, prednisone and colifoam would all add up and explain the sleeplessness. I was like that when I went into hospital and was on the IV Pred. Didn't sleep at all after the first few days when the drugs kicked in. Are you still in hospital? Ask then for a sleeping tablet and see if they'll give one to you. I was allowed to have a sleeping pill for the first couple of nights then they made me stop as they thought I was just on too many drugs! The nurses and Dr can advise you as to whether a sleeping pill is safe for you to take. I also had a thrush infection in my mouth when I was in hospital.

All common side-effects of pred I'm afraid. It will get better as you taper down the dose. I used to read, surf the net etc. just to pass the time during the night. It sucks! By the time I was on 40mg, I used to sleep 3am to 6am and then gradually increased the amount I slept as the pred dose went down.

Hope you feel better soon.

I can't guess what your ear problem is though.

Sorry you are going through all of this. It's 4 am an I'm wide awake too and have been at this hour for the last 2 1/2 weeks. I'm on 60 mgs of prednisone and take an evening dose of 30 mgs at night that wakes me up in the middle of the night. I went through this same thing last year. I'm going to start to taper off the prednisone soon and if I remember correctly when I got down to 40 to 30 mgs of prednisone taken all in the morning my sleeping improved. Hope that will be the case for you too, because 50 mgs is still a pretty high dose.

As for the ear, I also had the same problem a month ago. I had a bad head cold. My sinuses weren't really congested, but my right ear was plugged/clogged for two weeks. So incredibly annoying. The doctor said it looked like I had the start of a mild ear infection. It didn't hurt, I just couldn't hear. I tried the 5-day pack of antibiotics and it did NOTHING for me. I think it was a viral infection that took a good two weeks for it to go away on it's own. Since then, I've heard of a many other adults complaining about the same sort of head cold and ears bothering them.

Hope you get some sleep soon (me too).

thanks mates! it is late here now and yes, still awake.

at least i know if its the pred that it will go away soon.
i got about 2 more weeks of 50mg in the morning of pred. before i start to taper eeewww.

i guess i will get some sleeping pills on monday.

in the meantime, im gonna play some world of warcraft.

sweet dreams and i will catch ya on the flipside. haha
since of course i will still be awake.