I think that I have adrenal fatigue.

I don’t know yet. I’m waiting for my doctor to tell me if it’s safe for me to go ahead and take the saliva test that’s been sitting on my desk for the last two weeks. The instructions for the test say not to take it if you’ve recently taken nasal steroids, which I have, because it’s hay fever season, aka Flonase season. I had taken it for only six or seven days before my last doctor’s appointment, but for no reason in particular hadn’t taken any between the appointment and the arrival of the saliva kit by express mail.

In the meantime, I’m waiting for my doctor to return from a three-week mission trip. The cortisol in the Flonase could skew the results of the saliva test. I’ve waited a long time to find out what’s wrong with me, and I’m torn between the desire to know right now and accepting the reality of waiting a little longer. Life is short, too short, but waiting is just a few days.

The story of how I got adrenal fatigue (AF) (if I indeed have it) will be told here, in stages. If it’s not AF, it will be the same story, but with a different name. It’s been part of my life for almost six years, but I wasn’t motivated to see a doctor until the day two months ago when we were visiting family and I noticed that my husband’s cousin (let’s call him Wes) was reading a book called Adrenal Fatigue: The 21st-Century Stress Syndrome. The term caught my attention because I ran across it online two years ago in yet another attempt at self-diagnosis. Adrenal fatigue (or adrenal burnout, as it’s also known) was the only thing I had ever encountered that fully described both my symptoms and the way I’ve had to live my life since late 1999. Three things kept me from doing anything about it back when I first learned about AF.

First, over and over again I read that most people who experience AF never fully recover from it. Second, I was too tired to do anything about it. Third, had I had to the energy and motivation to do anything, I didn’t have the first idea where to start or who to see.

Wes isn’t a physician. He’s a nutritionist with a doctorate and a few other graduate degrees and he’s the director of a wellness center that specializes in treatment and prevention of lifestyle diseases, and he says that they’ve recently begun treating patients for AF. While I flipped through the book, I talked to him about my personal circumstances. He agreed that I might have AF, but he encouraged me to see a doctor for both diagnosis and treatment. Most importantly, he disagreed with the idea that full recovery was impossible for most people.

I called Barnes and Noble and had them hold a copy of Adrenal Fatigue. We were leaving on vacation within the week, and I wanted to be certain to have it with me on the trip. I also made an appointment with a new doctor (mine had moved) for the week after returning from vacation.

The doctor was nice. After some discussion and a cursory examination, he told me that there was nothing wrong with me, but he wasn’t going to tell me I was crazy. He suggested some lab tests, so I gave some blood and made a follow-up appointment for the following week.

The lab tests had a couple of red flags. First, my blood sugar was low—54—but it was late in the afternoon when I had the blood drawn, so that was no surprise to me. Second, my liver numbers were high, quite high compared to my last lab results two and a half years ago.

To address the low blood sugar, the doctor recommended a glucose tolerance test. I scheduled one for two days hence. He suggested another blood test to rule out hepatitis.

My cortisol level was right in the middle of normal, so he didn’t think that I had adrenal fatigue.

I left that appointment feeling unsettled. On the one hand, I was glad that he was ruling out several likely possibilities. On the other, I didn’t get the sense that he was taking my concerns seriously. There was something else I couldn’t put my finger on, too, but for the moment I let it be.

On Friday I returned for the glucose tolerance test, which took all morning. They took a fasting glucose reading, and then gave me a drink similar to 7-Up. The next few hours I got periodic finger pokes for more glucose readings.

While I sat in the waiting room, I figured out the thing I couldn’t put my finger on. My doctor and I weren’t even speaking the same language. What he considered to be AF and what I considered to be AF were two different things. I decided that I needed to do what I should have done in the first place—find a doctor with experience in treating AF.

The results of the glucose tolerance test were normal, and so were my hepatitis results. I got on the phone and started calling doctors. Several unsuccessful calls later, I decided that there had to be a faster way, and turned to Adrenal Fatigue to find a doctor.

Right away I found a doctor in my area who treats AF, so off I went to doctor #2. Doctor #2 thought I might have AF, but she noticed that doctor #1 hadn’t checked my thyroid, so I had my blood drawn (yet again), this time by a young nurse whose ego prevented him from using the vein that I told him to use and instead poked around my arm for more than a minute while I silently grimaced in pain (reminding me that I am the person in charge of my health care, not the health care professionals). She also ordered the saliva test that sits on my desk, waiting.

I don’t have the numbers yet, but I’m told that my thyroid test was normal. In the meantime, I’ve started implementing some of the suggestions from Adrenal Fatigue, and I’ll have more to say about that later.

Posted by (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on Monday, September 19, 2005 at 6:40 AM
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