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| Me at a healthy weight before diagnosis. |
The
clouds come rolling in; big, dark, and ominous.
My mind is in the middle of the storm, it blows in wreaking havoc on my
body. The roaring winds rip apart my thoughts and push and pull until there is
little left of the original structure. My world is collapsing and it hurts,
every breath I take I exhale more pieces of my failing body. The storm has
destroyed me. How can I begin to rebuild when I reach out for help and there is
no response? My S.O.S. falls on deaf ears and eyes that cannot see. I will not
give up. I must rebuild, I must find the one person who will listen to me and
not turn a blind eye to the extent of the damage my body and mind has
sustained.
My journey with Adrenal
Insufficiency started years ago. I don’t know if I can pick out the exact day
or time my body and mind started to fall apart and my world started spiraling
out of control. I look back and there are so many memories lost in a deep and impenetrable
fog. My comfort is that I finally have
an answer. It took years of me searching and doctors not listening. So many years passed where I would be the
person looking in on my life and wondering who that person was. It wasn't me
anymore. This girl looked like me and at times thought like me, and yet she was
not me. I strongly believe some of the first symptoms I experienced where
psychiatric in nature. There were small things like my lack of motivation to
very drastic changes in my personality and everything in between. I would call
my best friend and cry, I would be drenched in tears and hysterically trying to
seek some sort of comfort. He knew me so well, he knew the girl I was. The
anxiety that would take my life over prevented me from doing what I once
considered to be simple tasks. Among them was spending time with my three
wonderful children. I went from loving
the time we would go in adventures together, to dreading when they would return
from school. I had this overwhelming feeling to run away, run far far away. I
needed time alone and stress would overtake me.
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| I weighed 135lbs in this photo at my sickest. |
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| Before I started getting very sick at 170lbs. |
The
time to run away had finally come. I decided it was time for a change, it
needed to happen before I lost the last pieces of myself. Every day it seemed
that more pieces would fall to the ground, I was unraveling. I had always
dreamed of moving out west and it was time to follow my heart. As a child when
anyone would ask what I wanted to do when I grew up I would confidently reply,
a biologist. I wanted to work with amazing animals in amazing places. I had
always been drawn to the large carnivores I would watch on PBS. Wild America, I
wanted to be that piece of the wild, I wanted to live in it, save it and walk
with the bears, wolves, and fly free with the eagles. I ran away to college.
Prescott College to be exact. A school that allowed me to not only get me
education, but go to those amazing places I had watched on TV as a child.
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| 150 lbs |
Something
was still terribly wrong. Before I had decided to go to college I had a
hysterectomy, it was followed with a year of incurable infections. I was well
enough for a few months to make it to Prescott and complete our backcountry
orientation in the fall. By December I started having infections again. I took
antibiotics and pushed through. My personality started to decline further and
further. I was trying so hard to keep myself afloat, gasping for breaths of air
as the anxiety and depression swallowed me whole. I met someone, fell in love,
and could not deal with the stress of a relationship. I rallied and found the
courage to go to Alaska with my school as a class. I had been overcome just a
month prior with some of the worst migraines I had ever experienced. I was
scared to go, scared to leave, and scared to spend the summer roughing it in
the back country of one of the wildest places on earth. I did it anyway. Alaska
was a dream, it was more than a dream, I refused to let my body destroy my
childhood aspirations. In June of 2012 I departed on the journey of a lifetime,
with five other students and two instructors. There were days out in the
backcountry where I struggled to get out of my sleeping bag, I struggled to be
agreeable, I struggled to keep the fatigue at bay and the anxiety under
control. How could I be so miserable in such a wild and pristine place? I was
so angry with myself, this wasn’t me. Where had I gone, and how could I get myself
back?
Fast
forward a couple of months, I am back in Prescott, I am slightly out of
control. I have a shoulder injury that I made so much worse rock climbing on
for a month in my Rock and Geology course. I loved that course. It brought back
some peace to my life. Then I came back into town and I lost it. I received my
first cortisone injection in my shoulder. I felt like I had the worst flu ever
after that shot. It took a week for me to start feeling somewhat better. I
swore I would never do it again. I called my orthopedist and he said he had
never heard of cortisone shots making anyone sick. It must have just been me
coming down with something at the same time; he reassured me the shot was
safe. Eventually the pain in my shoulder
lessened, I could climb again, and yet I stopped doing everything. I struggled
through my classes, classes I had been so excited for. Animal biology should
have been a sure A for me. I never got less than a B anyway. I left two courses
that semester with C’s. The only reason I received those C’s was because I
talked to my professors, I cried and told them I felt like my life was slipping
away. I worked as hard as I could, but my ability to get through a short paper
had vanished. I would go to the library with a good friend, open my laptop and
cry. I would go into such an intense panic attack I would spend more time
outside smoking and pacing than I ever did working. How can this be, I would
ask myself, I would sit on the bench and just wonder if perhaps my time was
running short. There was no other explanation.
Four
months later I received my second cortisone shot, I did not want it but the
pain was unbearable. I was enrolled in a black and white photography course,
the only course I was able to attend that semester. I needed to be able to use
my shoulder. Then it happened again. I felt like I had the worst flu possible.
I had night sweats and nausea and I came to a point that I could no longer
drive myself anywhere. I would drive places and not know how I got there. I
would sit in my car and wonder how I ended up where I was. It was terrifying. I
went to see my primary care physician almost weekly. I would be in tears and
beg him to help me. My primary care
physician said I needed anti-depressants and therapy. He referred me to a psychiatrist and told me I
was too young to be this sick. I called my orthopedist again to ask if the
cortisone shot could have done this. He said there was no way the shot could
have made me this sick. He was both right and wrong. My women’s health nurse
practitioner was the only one who listened to me. She watched me waste away and
loose over 40 lbs in just a few months. I was dying; we both knew it. My nurse practitioner saved my life.
Edie
Morgan is the name of the wonderful woman who believed in me and she is the
reason my children still have a mother. I cannot adequately express the
gratitude I have for her. The terrible lower back pain and rapid weight loss
made Edie secretly think that I had lymphoma. She ran a scan and discovered
that my adrenal glands were calcified. This led to an AM and PM cortisol level
blood draw. Both those numbers came up as ZERO! It is a miracle I am alive. The
diagnosis officially happened in Chicago. That is a story for next time. The
tale of the beginning of adventures in my new life; my life with Addison’s
disease.
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| A couple months after diagnosis. The curves are back! |
