I Lived Through It!

This water deprivation was much harder than the last one. I woke up at 5AM so thirsty and I couldn't do a darn thing about it. The crazy thing is that I had to wake up and pee too. Wow! I was 7 hours into the deprivation and my body was still urinating during the night. That's pretty crazy.

I was awake from 5am to about 8am. I literally just laid in bed, sweating and just hoping that this would be over. Then eventually I fell asleep and woke up around 10AM. I felt so lifeless this morning. My mouth was tacky and I cracked my lip really bad during the night. It was bleeding. My left arm started to cramp up really bad. My fingers wanted to curl and my forearm was on fire!

We got to the lab and they were closed...LOL so we had to go to another lab about 30 minutes away. /sigh I told the lady to get the blood out of me now, so I can drink some water. She knew what was up and before she looked at the tubes said, "oh you are getting ADH checked?" I was impressed to be honest and she's drawn my blood before in the labcorp near my house.

My urine was fairly dark when I collected it this morning. That's a good sign that my body does concentrate urine somewhat. I know that I don't have severe, complete DI or I wouldn't even been able to go 3 hours without water. People with complete DI usually can't go more than 2 hours before their vitals get so weak that they are at serious risk of going into shock from fluid loss.

I am very curious to see what the results are from these tests. We did a BMP to check sodium, BUN, and potassium. Sodium is supposed to be higher when you are dehydrated and now that I'm taking florinef I wonder if my body is responding appropriately now. We also checked blood osmolality to see how thick my blood was getting. This tells you exactly how dehydrated the body is at that very moment. Anything above 295 means that you are maximum conservation mode. Lastly we checked serum ADH. This test isn't always that accurate, but I did it just to see how it compares to my numbers from the test in '08. The urine osmolality will tell me just about everything I need to know, but you have to compare it to the serum osmolality and sodium levels in the blood. You can't just look at 1 thing.

I will definitely post my lab results when I get them back. It will probably be 2 weeks because I know they have to send out the ADH to another lab.

More Blood Work and HC

I got my blood results back finally and here's what it said.

More of nothing...
21-Hydroxlyase Antibodies <1.0--(<1.0)
Antiadrenal Antibodies, Quant Negative--(Negative))
IGF-1 214--(116-358) Doc said this was a little low
17-alpha-Hydroxyprogesterone 104 (30-100 Follicular) Doc said this isn't high enough to worry about.

I guess I should be thankful that my body isn't attacking my adrenal glands, but...I am back to not understanding WHY my adrenals aren't working. Maybe it's just mercury toxicity? I wanted to know the reason, so that I could move on with my life. I have this condition yet no doctor can pinpoint the reason...

There is some good news.
The doctor had me start on 30mg of hydrocortisone on Thursday and it's really helping. In combination with the florinef, I can already tell a difference in my heat intolerance. While I'm not completely better yet, it must have been 85 in our house yesterday and I felt pretty good. I was extremely thirsty all day yesterday and just kept a filled Berkey water bottle next to me. It helped to keep me hydrated.

My sleep on the other hand has been absolutely terrible. I keep waking up at night, hot, sweating and extremely thirsty. Sometimes I have to use the bathroom too. Is this low aldosterone, low cortisol or do I really have diabetes insipidus? At this point, I have no idea. I haven't been taking my DDAVP recently because I wanted to see what the florinef would do for me. I'm still not sure.

Yesterday I didn't feel as good as the first day, but I'm hoping the irritability was just PMS...lol All and all I am very pleased. I am trying to wake up at a more "normal" time, so my HC doses are right. Unfortunately today I woke up around 9AM, but that' isn't too bad considering our sleep schedule used to be really screwed up waking up at 8PM and going to sleep when most folks are eating lunch.

I think I might be getting some low potassium symptoms (chest pains, irregular heart beats, leg cramps), so I self-ordered some blood work through econolabs.com. I ordered a CBC with differential and a CMP (comprehensive metabolic panel) to check my blood counts, liver enzymes and electrolyte balance. As I was writing this I checked my email and the requisition form was sent to me email already! That was really fast.

I'll have to wait and get this checked on Tuesday because Monday morning we have to go to court and I'm already nervous about it.