Where I Am

This lovely location has nothing to do with the blog post. Other than that I am now well enough to enjoy walks here again.

It took me a full six weeks on hydrocortisone to start feeling somewhat normal again. I am now having mostly normal days, with a few quirks I will talk about in a bit.

I did more bloodwork after visiting my endocrinologist for the first time. He is very thorough, and has other patients with adrenal problems. So far so good.

My cortisol was better, and I don't know how being on cortisol the previous month affected that. Most of the results were normal (though the cortisol was at a pretty low end of normal), but there were a few odd things. My endo says it's not Addison's but we need more testing to figure out what it is. No word on when or what yet. All of this took place just before the holidays.

I was almost panicked at that point, thinking he was going to tell me to wean off the hydrocortisone. Not that I like having to take it, but I am really pretty freaked out about feeling that bad ever again! But he didn't. He obviously feels that I've had such an improvement and since there were still some wonky things on the tests, I still need it for now at least.

So how's life going? Almost normal. I'm slowly upping the amount of time I spend walking, I'm usually able to help make dinner and clean up, I'm able to work and do chores (but I do have pace myself). I'm cautiously trying to build my strength and endurance back up, adding a few minutes of walking every week, doing some light weight workouts.

I've only had a couple of somewhat down days in the last few weeks. One was after a bee sting. I carefully got the entire stinger out right away, but I got what is known as a large late reaction, or maybe it's a late large reaction? The sting was OK shortly after I got the stinger out, but the next day it was inflamed and itchy, with a rather large firm bump at the sting site. And I had a very tired day. I didn't make the connection until the next day though, which was more normal.

So now I continue to be aware of how my body is reacting, and I wait to hear from the endo about what the next steps are. That's it!

Patti

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