I'm baaaack.

Yeah. It's been a long time, I know. And, to be honest, I've spent most of the past 6 months sitting on my butt. Literally. I've been sicker longer than I ever thought possible (or that I'd put up with). Forget all those past posts about menopause and shit. We're talking serious RARE conditions here! Everything is a bit of a blur at the moment when I try to think about what I've been doing with my time but, what I do remember, is lots of time in doctors' offices, labs, hospitals, and, my living room sofa. My sofa and I are intimately acquainted now.

Just the PowerPoint view of my current state of body craziness... I'll fill in details here and there. Mostly I need this list to remind myself because my mind is riddled, warped, and wrong quite often now. Did I mention that a side effect of some of my conditions is a true lack of mental clarity? Lovely. Totally frickin loverly.

Here goes.
* Hemochromatosis - my body doesn't know what to do with extra iron in my blood, so it stores the iron in tissues, organs, glands, wherever. Of course this tends to play havoc with tissues, organs, glands, etc. Treatment is to get bled. I have 500cc of blood drawn every week to get the excess iron down. Even had a plastic access port inserted in my chest so I don't have to worry about getting poked with IV needles. Best thing I've done in a while.
* Hypothyroidism - not too uncommon. The thyroid tends to slow down in most folks when we get older. Your metabolism slows down, hair stops growing, you get tired easily. Drugs for this aren't too big a deal, but testing for what you need can get complicated.
* Adrenal Insufficiency - my adrenal glands stopped working which means my body has no way of regulating its reaction to stress. Found this out the hard way when I collapsed in the doctor's office (lucky it happened there!) with "adrenal crisis". Coulda been deadly. Now on cortisone for the rest of my life and trying to find the correct dose to keep me going is a HUGE struggle. A total pisser!
* Hypopituitarism - my pituitary gland is shot... probably from the hemochromatosis. This creates a number of weird and not-so-wonderful problems. The pituitary has also stopped making human growth hormone, so I have to take injections of that for the rest of my life, too.
* Hiatel Hernia - tummy aches. On top of everything else (literal pun), my stomach is pinched above my diaphram. Lots of gastric reflux which is not so wonderful when you have to take lots of pills daily. But, I'll worry about this one later. Surgery can fix it. When we have money again. Someday.

I'm off to another doctor's appointment in the morning to see how my iron levels are and to start the next round of blood letting. Updates later.
Cheerz,
Mad Maudy