This time last year, I was just barely home from a 4 day stay in a mental health facility. I voluntarily checked myself in because the feeling that I needed to die was increasing by the day. I’ve struggled with depression for most of my life, but this was something much deeper than the depression I’d become used to. This was a dark and terrifying urge to do something, anything, to make my life stop.
I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to stop myself, and while I didn’t really want to die, I sure as hell didn’t want to live. You see, I’d been sick for a very long time. I remember as far back as my first few years of college, I was tired, unmotivated, never felt rested, and put on weight no matter what I did. As the years went on, I started to think that tired was normal, but in 2014, I started mentioning to my doctor that I was tired all the time.
Like any modern doctor would, he told me that I’d have more energy if I’d lose weight. Generally, I don’t disagree with him, but I was dieting and exercising as much as possible, but my weight was still packing on. By 2015, I was complaining of being tired every time I went to the doctor. In fact, I started making appointments just because I was so tired. I knew that some tiredness was expected, as a mom of two kids in the first few years of teaching, but this was beyond any kind of tiredness I’d ever seen in anyone around me.
The doctors ran tests: lupus, tuberculosis, mononucleosis, everything came back clear.
I was scared when the doctor said he was looking for lupus. I knew a woman who had just died from complications from lupus. I was strangely unrelieved when that test came back normal. Clearly, I wasn’t healthy, but there was no answer for me.
This time last year, 2016, I had taken a leave of absence from my job, a job I loved dearly, to try to focus on my health. I thought perhaps my depression and anxiety had just gotten out of control, so I took time off to see if that would help. Meds, sleep, therapy, nothing worked. I couldn’t drive myself to appointments. I couldn’t clean my house. I couldn’t get the kids to school every day without help from my mom and friends. I was losing the ability to function. I was dying.
The more I’ve learned over the past year about cortisol and what adrenal insufficiency does to a person, the more I realize that it was all clear, it all made sense, and someone could have done something to help me much sooner.
The most frustrating thing for me continues to be that one of my doctors checked my cortisol levels in February of 2016 and sent me home, “it’s a bit low, but no big deal.” He sent me home to die.
I’ve since changed to a different medical clinic, with a doctor who claimed to know about adrenal insufficiency but then gave me information directly contradictory to every endocrine journal I’ve read. I’ve been through two endocrinologists and sometimes wonder if I shouldn’t find one closer to home.
But tonight, I remember where I was one year ago, sitting in the same blue recliner, wishing I was dead. I don’t ever want to feel that way again, so I fight. I fight to educate new patients, I fight to educate the community, and I fight for better healthcare for patients; instead of claiming we are crying wolf, doctors need to help us! Death due to adrenal crisis is almost always preventable if only the health providers would listen to us. My voice will be heard, so others don’t have to suffer, so others can be saved, too.
And tonight, I’m grateful to be alive.
Spoons and Adrenals 