Chronic Rants

Regrets over how my health was handled in the past aren’t new, but my sudden memory of some particular past conversations with one of my doctors still hit me hard recently.

So many times I’ve thought, if only I’d been diagnosed with Celiac disease as a child. If only my doctors had taken me seriously. If only it hadn’t taken more than a decade of symptoms to realize I had autoimmune disease. If only I had known that frequent diarrhea and cramps weren’t normal. If only my adrenal fatigue had been caught earlier.

Then there are the more specific instances. If only when I asked my doctor to test me for lactose intolerance, he hadn’t lied and said there was no such test. If only I’d realized then that I need to find someone new. If only I hadn’t been stuck in crappy HMOs and had had more options when it came to choosing doctors. If only the gastroenterologist I finally visited hadn’t labeled me with IBS and then written me off. If only the doctor I went to with complaints of fatigue didn’t tell me to “give it more time” even a year after it began.

But then a few weeks ago I suddenly remembered something. It started simply enough: I was curious to know if my hydrocortisone, which I started in 2019 for adrenal fatigue, was putting me at higher risk for severe Covid. I looked up the prednisone dose that’s considered risky, then found an online conversion to hydrocortisone. Both are steroids, and HC is basically a very low dose of prednisone, which I’d been on many times in the past. When I was on prednisone in the past, it was always to treat pain, but I was thrilled with the extra energy it gave me as a bonus – I felt so much better! Of course, I didn’t like the other side effects so much. It messed with my memory, made me very emotional, gave me severe brain fog, caused me to gain a lot of weight, and more. But the energy was fantastic!

I realized eventually that the energy boost had been a clue. I’m sure many people have extra energy on prednisone, but I had a huge boost when I took even tiny doses. Even 2.5 mg helped and 5mg felt great. My fatigue had begun after a virus in 1999 and never got better, but it was mild for many years. The first time I had the extra prednisone energy was in 2006. It wasn’t until 2011 that I became too disabled to continue working. My guess is that I would have left work a year earlier if I hadn’t been on prednisone for many months prior. It wasn’t until 2013 that I learned I had adrenal fatigue. These dates are about to become very relevant to the story.

I can’t count the number of times I wished the adrenal fatigue had been caught earlier. It’s by far my most disabling symptom. It’s the symptom that is stopping me from working, the one that’s stopping me from getting a dog. When my naturopath diagnosed my adrenal fatigue in 2013, she started me on supplements that helped a lot. But then that company went out of business. We tried a different supplement and it helped, but it never worked as well as the first one. I struggled for years, and just couldn’t quite increase my energy the way I needed to. Feeling “better” felt just a little bit out of reach – far enough that I longed for it, but close enough that I kept trying.

Eventually I switched to a new primary care doctor, a functional medicine practitioner, and he acknowledged my adrenal fatigue. My previous PCP hadn’t. He immediately recommended hydrocortisone, but I didn’t want to be on steroids at all, and definitely not for the rest of my life, which was a very real possibility. So I continued to struggle. Eventually, my naturopath also thought that HC was necessary but still, I resisted. I continued to adjust my diet, change my exercise, alter my supplements. I tried so hard. And finally I had to admit the truth: it wasn’t working.

In August 2019 I started HC, compounded for me at a pharmacy that makes it gluten-free and corn-free, something that wouldn’t be available through the local pharmacies. The difference was noticeable. I felt a lot better. I also gained a lot of weight and my hair started to fall out. It took a while to adjust the dose, but finally, it seems to be right. My energy isn’t what I want it to be, but it’s a lot more stable. I still can’t work. I still can’t care for a dog. But I can generally function better, and I’m no longer having the “episodes” that I previously had when my adrenals became too stressed. I lost most of the weight I had gained and my hair stopped falling out (aside from what’s normal, of course.) So it seems that where I’m at now is about the best I can achieve, at least for now, even though it’s not nearly what I want it to be. And that brings us back to now. If only I’d tried HC sooner, before so much damage had been done to my body.

I looked at the calculator’s output on the computer screen. My HC translated to a very low dose of prednisone. Low dose of prednisone. That was familiar. And then I remembered a doctor from all of those years ago. The one I never saw for adrenal fatigue, the one I saw before I even knew what adrenal fatigue was, the one who first tested me for adrenal fatigue nonetheless. I saw him for many years. First he treated my PCOS (polycystic ovary syndrome) and then my hypothyroidism. He diagnosed me with Hashimoto’s disease, which for some reason my previous doctor hadn’t diagnosed. As my fatigue persisted, he tested me for adrenal fatigue, but he only did blood tests, which did not show it. If only he had done the saliva tests, which are more accurate. Still, he didn’t blow off my symptoms, even while he wasn’t sure what to do. When I came off of prednisone at one point and complained of the renewed fatigue, he suggested that maybe I should continue taking a very low dose permanently. He said that even 2.5mg or 5mg daily could make a huge difference. I would be on it for the rest of my life.

I scoffed. Daily steroids? For the rest of my life? No way! I wouldn’t even consider it, and I privately questioned his judgment. I saw this doctor for about 12 years, so it’s hard to remember exactly when this was, but it was before I’d ever been diagnosed with adrenal fatigue, probably between 2008 and 2011. He’d run the test, and even though it came back negative, he must have suspected the truth. He offered me a treatment that I turned down but that, in hindsight could have helped so much. If only I’d listened.

The truth, of course, is that I can’t be sure. Maybe taking prednisone back then, before I had gotten so much worse, could have caused other problems. Maybe the short term side effects would have caused me to give up. Besides, I had real reasons to reject it. My short term side effects were bad, but I was even more worried about the long term side effects: brittle bones, cancer, vision problems, and more were quite possible. He had said the odds of those side effects were lower with such a low dose, but since I was only in my 30s, I would have been taking it for decades. That’s a long time to take a medication with such severe potential side effects. I had been misled, ignored, dismissed, and misdiagnosed by so many doctors, that I had good reasons to not automatically try whatever they suggested.

I had very good reasons for turning down the suggestion, so I am trying to remind myself that I made the best choice I could with the information I had at the time. And there’s no way to know what the outcome would have been even if I’d tried it. But still, sometimes it creeps back in: if only….

I looked at the computer screen. My dose of HC came out to 4.38mg prednisone. The doctor had suggested 2.5 mg or 5mg. He’d been right. Crap. If only I’d listened. If only I’d tried it.

If only I could learn to let go of the if onlys.