My Lazaretta Day

By:  Tag  Monday, 3. February 2003

I’m now a just-turning-50 year old woman. I was diagnosed as hypothyroid in November 2001 and then with Addison’s just a few months later in early February 2002.  This was after about twelve months of increasing illness – and for six months of that time, I was very sick indeed.  

Compared with where I was a year ago, I am Lazaretta arisen from the grave!  I’ve got better at managing my health and my medication throughout my post-diagnosis year. I’ve been helped in my self-education by what’s available on the internet, by various books, and by the adrenal bulletin boards.

My medication regime now runs:

• 15mg hydrocortisone, 100mcg fludrocortisone, 100mcg thyroxine on waking

• 10mg hydrocortisone 5 hours later

• 5mg hydrocortisone 4-5 hours later

• HRT & Calcium plus Vitamin D on going to bed.

Six months after my Addison’s diagnosis, I started a new job in overseas development.  This involves some overseas travel and I’m just back from two and a half weeks teaching in a rural part of northern Nigeria. That's Mary from Hadejia, on my right in the photo.

I still feel quite mentally sluggish and under par and often find myself caught in a kind of lethargy with poor concentration – which is not depression – but nonetheless seems to hold me back from re-finding my old energetic self.   Neither is it brilliant news for my new job or my PhD. Maybe I’m being too impatient and I need to allow myself more time to adjust or maybe, as I fear, I really did lose millions of brain cells in the ‘twilight zone’ before my diagnosis!  Otherwise, I would characterise myself as living well with my endocrine conditions, not suffering from them.

I am an optimistic person and as my beloved dad was a medic, I don’t have illusions about the god-like nature of medicine or medics.  The consultant I see is efficient and my treatment has transformed things from this time last year.  And  yet, there is clearly little scope at my local hospital for the kind of scrutiny and support that could devise a holistic plan to support me to live well with my medical condition, rather than just to exist or survive. I like to be a pro-active partner in my treatment, so that’s what I’m pursuing for myself at the moment through various different routes, including, especially, what I have learnt from the experiences of others within the ADSHG.

With hindsight, my adrenals were probably giving up the ghost at least a year or two before I felt ill. I would say now that my first symptom was a large patch of darker pigmentation on my belly just above my navel, for which I was eventually referred to the dermatology department at my local hospital. A patch test for skin allergies simply told me what I already knew – that I was allergic to nickel and chrome.   But nobody mentioned Addison’s and it gradually faded. Then I acquired a darker, tanned-looking patch of pigmentation across my whole forehead. But there were no dark lines in my skin creases, nor dark gums as you see described in the medical textbooks.

A lot of my pre-diagnosis symptoms, I put down to the demands of my job. I was working in Bosnia & Herzegovina from 1997 - 2001 in a rewarding but high-stress job with primary school teachers on the rebuilding of their education system. 

There were other health complications as well. In May 2000 I had a hysterectomy as the result of a mango-sized uterine fibroid (first found by my GP in 1998).  The surgery brought unforeseen and awful complications: a bad post-operative haemorrhage, paralytic illeus (where the digestive system ‘freezes’, requiring the stomach to be pumped) and a pulmonary embolism (blood-clot on the lung). To prevent further clots, I was on Warfarin for 9 months. 

Oh, and just for good measure on the stress index, I got married for the second time in August of 2000, too.

continues...

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