My Story: Why Do I Feel So Awful?

This is my story. It is still ongoing because I am NOT better. I have only recently gained the knowledge I need to begin to explore treatment options.

It has been a few months since I began to feel like total garbage. Unfortunately, I think I have been damaging my adrenals since I was 10 years old. The foods that I ate were not healthy and started me down a path of destruction.

I used to be a huge drinker of diet sodas and have found out that they cause so many problems. Dare I say, I think it is a huge contributor to obesity and chronic diseases in this country! If you drink that stuff, which used to be classified as a chemical warfare weapon, please visit this website for more information.

Everything started rather slow for me. It wasn't like all of these symptoms started overnight, which is what made this difficult to pinpoint. It was right after a few extremely stressful times in my life. My husband's grandfather died early in 2006, my grandfather had died in December 2006 and my sister was diagnosed with a brain tumor in February 2007. You can imagine how stressful these past months were for me. I am the type of person that swallows their stress and hides it very well from people. However in reality I was tearing myself apart inside!

I think the reasons why I didn't feel the effects of all this stress right away was because I had drastically changed my diet just prior to my grandfather's death. It was a blessing in disguise when I look back at it. I stopped eating all packaged and processed foods. Anything that went in my mouth was in it's natural, whole state. The week I found out about my sister was probably the worst week of my life. A dark depression kicked in and the lack of appetite was so very strong. I didn't want to talk to anyone and could barely even think clearly.

Eventually my feelings of helplessness faded and my sister's surgery was a success. 6-8 weeks later is when things really started to get bad for me though.

Now you may think that I would have gone to the doctor's before this, but I have a severe distrust in doctors and health care in America. I REFUSE to take their pharmaceutical drugs and add to their profit margins. Keep in mind that these symptoms would come and go and started slowly. I just thought I was feeling ill because I had drifted slightly away from my "diet" plan.

This is when it got bad. I lost 8 lbs in one week and I felt like I was dying. My primary care doctor yelled at me for my weight (I am very thin as it is) and did not even listen to my concerns (You wonder why I HATE doctors). She told me that I was too skinny and that she basically would not hear my concerns until I gained 30 lbs, which is total insanity! The weight she said I needed to be, I have NEVER weighed in my entire 6 years I had seen her. Obviously she was PMSing that day and took it out on me. She ordered blood tests just to get me out the door. A few days later a visit to the ER revealed more of nothing. Absolutely nothing. The doctor was so rude by accusing me of being a heroine addict and coming in for drugs. He asked me if my husband beats me and whether or not he "treats me like a queen". Did I already say I strongly dislike doctors? The visit was a waste of 6 hours of my life and $200.

The blood tests came back and I started to vigorously research the results. My doctor said that everything was "normal", but when I got the results in the mail they were NOT normal. ALWAYS get a copy of your lab results from your doctor, ESPECIALLY if they say they were normal! I swear these doctors do not look at the results! There were specific things that were high or low that concerned me. My white blood cell count was slightly low, my eosinophils were very high, and my sodium was low. Looking into all of these things, I kept coming back to Addison's Disease. The website wrongdiagnosis.com is fabulous. You can put in your symptoms and it will tell you what it may be! This is what I did to first find out that I could have an adrenal problem. However, it was not clear cut at this point. I checked the symptoms and mine didn't match to adrenal insufficiency. I was having night sweats, weight loss, and fatigue, but some of the typical adrenal symptoms were not present.

To make a long story a tad bit shorter, I left that doctor to go to another. My symptoms started to change at this point, which is why I decided to go to a new doctor! I was becoming very lightheaded, dizzy and my heart would race when I stood up. It was hard catching my breath when this happened and I felt like I was carrying around a 100lb pound on my back. Every little thing was 1000 times harder to do than it used to be. Walking down the stairs to let a dog outside was so difficult or bending down to fold clothes or put away dishes became a workout. It was like I had run a marathon and I could not figure it out!

This new doctor was no help either. At least she was willing to listen to me unlike the other one. A person I met over the internet told me about a website called www.stopthethyroidmadness.com . It was a miracle that I met this person because I don't think I would be where I am right now without this information. I was able to order a saliva test and found out it appears I am in Stage 5 Adrenal Fatigue.

My story ends here because I am exploring my treatment options. I basically refuse to take any type of hormones that will cause my adrenals to quit working. There is a doctor in this area that I just found out about, that I will give a try. But with my luck in the past few months I really don't have much hope.

Here's to more tests, wasted dollars, and more adrenal fatigue...
I get more adrenal fatigue from trying to figure out what is causing my adrenal fatigue. Talk about irony.

READ: PART 2 of my story here!