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I was not
at all well in the early part of 2001: very low in energy
and spirits, crying a lot and feeling unable to cope. Much
of which I put down to being back in Bosnia as a project
manager, so soon after the operation and its associated
trauma.
I date the
shift to becoming really ill to 1st June 2001 when I had a
strange ‘fugue’ in the shower. I nearly fainted and
couldn’t lift my arms to wash my hair. But at that point,
having rushed from Bosnia to Bergen in Norway for a
conference, I put it down to overwork and an abrupt change
in climate from very dry heat to very wet heat.
However, as a
rudely healthy person in general, it scared the bejazzus out
of me. I also had a persistent chest infection and cough,
which had started in Norway on 1st June and was finally
diagnosed as caused by the mycoplasma organism.
Throughout
July 2001, my much-loved 79 year-old father, who had
irritable bowel syndrome, and who had developed drug-induced
Parkinson’s after complications following surgery in Dec
1991 to remove an ulcerated section of bowel, was
distressingly hospitalised. He finally died in mid-August
that year.
I am
fortunate in my GP. She took my repeated visits with vague,
ill-defined but debilitating symptoms seriously. I’m sure it
helped that I had been a very infrequent visitor to the
surgery previously. We tried anti-depressants; these made me
feel hideous, as if my brain stem was being squeezed. We
tried HRT briefly, which seemed to make no difference at
all.
Then she did
blood tests in case it was tuberculosis (the Bosnia
connection) and that threw up the hypothyroidism. I started
on thyroxine in November 2001, but failed to feel much
better. In fact, I still had a brain like wallpaper paste
and felt as if I had concrete boots on my lower legs. I had
to go up and down stairs on my bum and when my speech and
handwriting slowed down, frequently sounded and looked as if
I was drunk . I finally asked for a referral to an
endocrinologist and got an appointment ten months in the
future.
Finally,
after starting supply teaching at a large and tricky
secondary school three days a week in January 2002, I began
to pass out in the mornings a couple of minutes after
getting out of bed. On that basis, my GP suggested that I
might have Addison’s. She managed to get me an emergency
appointment with the consultant on 1 Feb 2002, at which
appointment I was diagnosed with Addison’s Type 2 and
immediately put on hydrocortisone and fludrocortisone. This
was my Lazaretta day.
Since then, I
have also re-started HRT and calcium plus vitamin D tablets,
as my bone-density test showed osteopenia in my back. I’m
still waiting to be listed for a day-curve analysis.
So do I feel
held back by Addison’s? No, although I’ve had to adjust and
develop a new sense of ‘self’. I’m not afraid of dying: my
biggest fear is becoming one of what I call the living
dead. As a friend and mentor of mine said, I’ve always
wanted to wear out rather than rust out and maybe that’s
just what I did to my adrenals. If so, then I don’t regret
a moment of it!
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