This is very long… I’m writing it for myself, mostly, a record, a way of purging the thoughts in my head, but also, I know there are others out there like me who are struggling with a diagnosis, struggling with doctors who don’t understand, struggling with family and friends who mean well but don’t ‘get it’… and if you are like me, you scour the blogosphere, the health boards, the forums and look for anyone who might possibly ‘get it’, or who might have some insight into why things are the way they are.
If any of these conditions exist for you, maybe someone will benefit from my story… if not, don’t feel obligated to read. This is just more about me, for me, put out there for whomever it might help.
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It’s been about a couple of weeks now since I got a more detailed information about what is really wrong with my health. I’ve been on 60mg of Prednisone daily since then. Well, correction: I’ve been given up to 60mg I can take per day, but I’m not necessarily supposed to take that much if I don’t need that much. So I take 20mg in the morning, then dose in 5-10mg increments throughout the day as I need them. How I know I need them right now is tough: I wait until I have symptoms. That is, if I get shaky, feel pain, the nausea comes back, etc, then I know I need a dose. I take the smallest dose possible, then every 20 minutes I increase it by 2.5-5mg until the symptoms go away.
Unlike a diabetic who doesn’t make enough insulin and can measure blood sugar to see how much to dose, people who have adrenal insufficiency–not just adrenal fatigue or exhaustion but rather actual insufficiency (It’s called Addison’s Disease, but it’s part of a bigger issue called PGA-II – more on that later)–there is is no test I can do to see what my cortisol levels are immediately and adjust. So the only way I can dose is to see how I feel and know and trust that the medication does make the symptoms go away once I get it to the right dosage.
This means that I have to let myself feel bad sometimes in order to feel better.
LIFE IS LIKE THAT THOUGH
That got me to thinking about life in general and how this is not any different. Sometimes, you have to go through the pain and suffering to get to the other side. In real life, it’s easier for me though. You make a decision that hurts you a bit bigger at one time but that you know will make you feel better in the long run, versus staying with a lower level of hurt long term. Like a bad relationship. You know that you should leave, but you’re afraid of the initial pain, though time and again life has proved repairable, everything always gets better, etc. Still, what’s the song say, “The first cut is the deepest…”
WATER IS GOOD AND BAD
Right now, I’m back and forth between severely dehydrated and waterlogged. I’m drinking Powerade Zeros, to keep potassium and sodium up. We doing salt, but the salt started to burn… well, in places you really don’t ever want to burn, which included my stomach and more… uhm… delicate places. We’re pretty sure we know the problem is fluctuating aldosterone, a hormone that has to do with the Addison’s Disease and the other stuff going on with me. When the prednisone was increased to such high levels, all the fluid I had been retaining for several years, off and on, started just pouring out of me. By pouring out, I mean, I was peeing and spewing and my nose was running and my eyes were watering like I was crying but I wasn’t. Water just flowing from every pore. I was sweating. It was crazy. Then, suddenly, I looked down one day and realized, Oh, My God! I have feet! I have ankles! Oh, gosh, look… TOES! I’m now also taking fludrocortisone, which is a mineralcorticoid steroid, and that made me puff up like a blowfish, but we’re working down on the dosage and I’ll eventually get it all balanced. I hope.
SHRINK WRAPPED MICHY
So yeah, finding long lost body parts wasn’t a bad thing, but then the water wasting didn’t stop. Once all the fluid was gone, I started to shrivel up. Have you ever used those vacuum sealers that suck all the air out of plastic bags? My body started to do that, implode inward, shriveling up, shrinking up tight. Hey, it’s the tightest my belly has been since I was in high school! Well, okay, not… but a girl can fantasize, no?
While it seems like a good thing to shrink, and the scale was agreeing with me with the weight loss, my skin was losing water too, and creases from the sheets of the bed were staying on my skin for hours after getting up. I’d rest my hand on the side of my computer and the crease from the indention of the computer would dig into my skin and it wouldn’t refill and plump back up. Worse yet, I had this irritating dry cough too. The worst part of it was no energy. None. I literally had no energy reserves. Ugh.
BALANCE, BALANCE, BALANCE
The problem right now is a simple one though. I mean, it’s scary at times and it’s irritating, but we know why it’s happening and we know what we need to do to fix it, so that’s a hell of a lot better than where I was before when we didn’t know what was going on and I just felt lousy for no good reason. Now, I have reasons and we have choices and actions we can try to fix it. Eventually, over time–and the stuff I’m reading says it can take up to a couple of years for some people to get regulated–we will find the perfect combination of these drugs and steroidal hormone replacements and such and it will all even out.
Until then, I just have to try to stay as stable and healthy as possible. I’m good with that. I’m losing weight again, eating better, feeling a lot better even if I’m a little under the weather the last couple of days… the week prior to the dehydration though was the best week I’ve had in over seven years. No lie, my friends. I had one amazing, pain-free, energy high, wonderful, beautifully amazing week – the best in over seven years when it comes to how I feel. The high-dose steroids help with my back pain and inflammation there too, so I was able to stand for a time, walk a little bit without much pain at all, do some stretches that felt amazing that I couldn’t do without pain before. I cooked, cleaned, got caught up on some household projects I had to do, caught up on some work projects I’m still behind on but made a lot more headway than I thought I would. I felt like me for a week. That was an amazing gift.
I had no pain meds, no muscle relaxers, nothing. I was afraid after two years solid of taking the pain pills that I was dependent upon them, or addicted, or whatever word you want to use, but the truth is, when I don’t feel pain, I don’t even think to reach for them. I took a pain pill two nights ago when the dehydration had me aching really bad, so I could relax and try to sleep. That’s the first pain pill I’d had in two weeks, and that pleases me more than I can say. I took one last night too, because the pain is there again, but it’s much reduced from where it was. I was taking 2-5 pain pills per day for two years solid, so two pills in four weeks is pretty good. The pain pills make my brain foggy, and it’s nice to finally be able to think a bit more clearly, to remember things, to not feel so foggy and out of the loop of my own life.
Anyway… as for balance, let me show you something scary:
This is what I mean by balance. One day, all day long, my BP was around 142/95, pulse was 59. the next day, all day long, my BP was around 84/45, pulse 58. My pulse is great, but the BP fluctuations are scary. When it’s in the 140/90 range, my head pounds and pounds and pounds and feels like it’s going to explode, I have high anxiety and feel restless and jittery. When it’s super low, like 84/45 (and it’s been lower), I have no energy, feel listless, like I can’t even raise my arm up. I also feel like my chest is hollow.
The good news is, since I started the fludrocortisone, my BP has been steady at 130/79… which is a little higher than we’d like, but it’s nowhere near dangerous or bad, considering how much prednisone I’m taking. My blood glucose is good too, which is a worry when steroids are taken long term. I get my actual insulin levels checked next week.
LAB WORK
I still have a bunch of lab work to do tomorrow. I don’t want to get poked again, but it looks like I will have to in order to get better. We have a diagnosis now, but we need some lab tests to determine what kind of the diagnosis I have and what they will do to treat it.
NEW DRUGS
I had Cytomel added to my thyroids meds. Cytomel makes me buzzed. I’m not sure that’s a good thing or a bad thing, but I do get a little tiny bit manic with it, for a short time, and it lets me get a lot of work done too. I have energy I haven’t had in a while, at least, I feel energetic. The problem is, another condition is keeping me from BEING energetic, in that I have some severe muscle weakness that isn’t helping. Anyway, these are the two new drugs, and then along with the supplements, I’m now on the lowest/least amount of medication I’ve been on in about seven years too, and each pill actually makes sense to me this time, because I’m seeing results finally.
DIAGNOSES
So what’s wrong with me? Well… it’s autoimmune. Yes, I know, it seems everyone is getting autoimmune these days, right? There’s a reason for that. Our society, the chemicals in our foods and environment, toxins, antibiotics, resistance, and all sorts of stuff are causing people to get their immune systems in overdrive and eventually, when there’s nothing for the immune system to fight, it starts attacking the body.
For me, I have two main issues that were finally diagnosed. One is called Polyglandular Autoimmune Type II – or PGA-II, or multiple endocrine deficiency syndrome type II. There’s actually several names for it. Some of you might remember when they thought I had Addison’s disease. Then they thought I was hypothyroid. Then they thought I had hypopituitarism, or that there was something wrong with my hypothalamus… well, the point is, they were all right. PGA-II is a disorder that attacks the HPA axis (hypothalamus, pituitary, adrenal axis)… I have Addison’s Disease, Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis and it’s looking suspiciously like I have diabetes inspidius too (not the blood sugar diabetes, but the one where the kidneys waste water and you lose minerals from your body and get dehydrated and such). So PGA-II is definitely the right diagnosis – FINALLY.
But that didn’t account for the pain and the edema. So I have this rash on my hands, don’t know where it came from. I never bothered to say anything to the doctor about it, because, quite frankly, the rash was so minor in the scheme of all the major problems I was having, I just didn’t even think to complain about it. Then the doctor saw it. Boom. Diagnosis. A lousy little skin rash I’d been fighting off and on since 2006 ended up being the one thing that got me a diagnosis.
How’s that for some irony in the universe?
DERMATOMYOSITIS / POLYMYOSITIS
An idiopathic inflammatory myopathy that causes muscle wasting and regeneration, weakness, pain, tenderness, swelling, edema, rashes, and untreated, death. Nice, huh? Only 72% of all people diagnosed with it are still alive five years after diagnosis. That means more people die from it than do some cancers, but that’s okay, ’cause this has cancer associated with it. So yeah, I have to get a cancer screening regularly to make sure I don’t have bladder, lung or abdominal cancer and to rule out the most common, non-hodgkin’s lymphoma. That’s a little scary, but at least I know the increased risk and can watch for it, right? I’m supposed to get an EMG and a muscle biopsy to confirm diagnosis, but we might just be bypassing that. It’s a scary condition. I’ve been a little numb about it too, not sure what to think. For some lucky people, they actually do go into remission with this, some of them for the rest of their lives.
I’d like to be one of those people. So that’s where I’m putting my energy. Plus, I’ve already beat the odds. If the rash I had back in 2006 was the first onset of symptoms, which makes sense looking back now, then that means it’s already been five years and I’m still alive and as far as we currently know, I’m cancer free too. I started treatment and there has been improvement already, though there are some minor setbacks with the treatment, so all said and done, I think this might just be tolerable.
NO PAIN MEDS = GOOD THING
Did I mention how much I love being off the pain meds? I mean, it’s nice to have them when the pain is bad, like last night when I took one to help bring pain down enough to sleep, but I used to wake in the morning and be completely unable to move – literally unable to move – until someone else gave me a pain pill and my other meds and I’d lay in bed for an hour waiting for the pain to lessen, never go away, but lessen.
It’s all a start… we’re on the right track.
For those who are reading this because you too have a new diagnosis–and thanks to those who have emailed about the steroid psychosis and other health stuff – I’m so glad it’s helping some of you find answers – I wanted to include my diagnoses and medication so it can help you. I learned so much from reading medical forums from people being treated with the same conditions and that took me to asking my doc for a new medication that has made a huge difference. So while I’m not a doctor, and this is not medical advice, you can see if any of it might be worth thinking about.
PGA-TYPE II – POLYGLANDULAR AUTOIMMUNE TYPE II – OR – MULTIPLE ENDOCRINE DEFICIENCY SYNDROME TYPE II –
This is a condition that includes several other stand-alone conditions that occur together. It’s not uncommon when something is wrong with the HPA-axis for there to be multiple endocrine system failure or deficiency, especially when it’s autoimmune related, since the autoimmune antibodies attack the same types of cells and tissues, in this case, the endocrine system ones. This can include the thyroid, pituitary, hypothyalamus, adrenals, kidneys, sex hormones, the brain itself… and in some cases, the heart is involved too. The three main conditions of PGA-II for me are: Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis, Adrenal Insufficiency (Addison’s Disease), and hypoaldosteronism with diabetes insipidus.
- Hypothyroidism – Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis =
2.75mcgs Levothyroxine (T4) & Cytomel 1/2 of a .25mcg twice daily – the Cytomel is new to me. It makes me a little bit buzzy, but the good news is, my weight is coming down again, my eyebrows are coming back (did you know hypothyroidism makes eyebrows go away in some people? It did me!), and I have more energy and less aches and pains. I think a big chunk of that improvement is the Cytomel. If you are taking ONLY a T4 medication, you need to talk to your doctor. T3 is so crucial and not everybody’s body can convert T4 properly. I highly, highly recommend visiting this website: STTM: Stop the Thyroid Madness, if you are hypothyroid at all. There’s so much good information here. My best friend is on Armour and she just started it last week based on what we read on this site, and her doctor is very supportive, and it’s made a HUGE difference in her too. My dosages are too high to consider Armour at this point – 2.75mcgs is actually way on the upper end of thyroid meds, and Armour dosing is different, so I’m happy with the Cytomel and the T4 right now, since I’m also dealing with the other stuff.
- Adrenal Insufficiency (Addison’s Disease) =
Was prescribed hydrocortisone, but it was DXed when I started prednisone, since they do the same… was still a 3 on cortisol levels when I was taking 30mg of hydrocortisone, and my ACTH stimulation test failed miserably. Dexamethasone caused steroid psychosis. Prednisone seems to work, and I need it for the other stuff, so that’s our drug of choice. Most people, however, don’t take prednisone for this long term. I do for the DM, but it just happens to also help with this too.
- Hypoaldosteronism, secondary to Addison’s, and diabetes insipidus =
.1 fludrocortisone can take 1/2 to 1 up to three times daily (usually only take 1 total, cut in half, twice daily) – When the adrenal glands don’t work right, they do more than just spit out adrenaline, and this is a condition that can crop up because the adrenals and the HPA axis isn’t working right. This is a mineralcorticoid – it helps with retention of calcium, magnesium, potassium, sodium and other things that keep the fluid/water/electrolyte balances in the body stable.
My first experience with fludrocortisone was horrible. I got water logged, felt like I’d been swimming for hours and swallowing water down my nose with my head all stuffed and watery. My feet, hands, face, neck and chest all swelled up like someone had filled me up like a water balloon. We finally realized I was taking too much. Also, you have to be careful with salt intake on this stuff. I am a salt craver (it’s part of hypoaldosteronism), but eating too much salt on this stuff is bad, bad. Not getting enough isn’t so great either. It’s a very delicate balance. I’ve read that some folks take this pill with a little bit of sea salt water. I’m doing more reading about the optimal salt intake for these conditions. I’m sure I’ll talk about it more in the future. For now, I’ve cut the dosages way back to 1/2 of a .1 pill twice per day. It might still be too much and I might go to half a pill once per day or half a pill every other day. This is a potent little pill. I was able to reduce my prednisone on the days I took this pill though, so I do get a glucocoritcoid effect from it.
DERMATOMYOSITIS / POLYMYOSITIS
This is the new diagnosis for me and it’s the one that finally has brought me some relief. This presented as a rash, and then the rest all just sort of fell into place and made sense. I take up to 60mg of prednisone daily, split doses about every 3-4 hours, stepping down (20mg AM, 10 late-AM, 10-Afternoon, 5-10 evening) with a little room for ‘stress dosing’ on days when I’m sick, get injured, have a stressful day, etc. I dose by how I feel. If fluid retention is up, I feel nauseated, the pain is coming on, etc, I take a little more and if I feel good I take a little less. We’re still working on optimal dosing, but it seems that 30mgs on most days does the trick and 50mg on a really bad day is a good amount. I’ve only done the 60mg on the first day, and it made it hard to sleep. The sleep issue is much better when I take lower doses split out at night than taking one bigger dose in the evening.
This condition causes progressively worsening muscle weakness, particularly of the trunk muscles of the body, the hips, the girdle area, the back, then into the upper arms and legs. In severe cases, the lungs and heart are both involved in the degeneration and regeneration of muscle tissues. This also causes calcium deposits under the skin that can be quite painful but sometimes go away too. It causes pain and weakness, trouble standing, trouble lifting, trouble reaching, trouble doing a lot of things in fact that I’ve had trouble doing. I had assumed that it was my back being messed up but the more we look into this the more it seems that–though my back really is messed up–I might have more mobility in my back than I thought I did, but because the DM/PM weakens those muscles, the back had little support from the muscles.
Prednisone does two things here: helps strengthen the muscles while suppressing the immune response that attacks the muscle tissue. This allows the muscle to regenerate with out degenerating again, and that helps build back strength. Stretching and muscle building exercises–lightly and very slowly–can also help build up strength. I’ve been doing the stretching and it’s tough ’cause it hurts sometimes, but I take it slowly, and I’m seeing improvement in some areas. This is a very positive development and I hope it continues in this direction.
BLOOD PRESSURE
I put this here now because its important to understand that sometimes the ‘cure’ is not always the safest thing, and you have to weigh options. All my life, my blood pressure has been surprisingly low. When I was a kid, it was low enough sometimes I would get nose bleeds and get dizzy from it. As an adult, it’s always been on the low end of excellent – always – even when I was thin even when I was fat and everywhere in between, my blood pressure had always been good.
Until I started taking thyroid medication. Then my blood pressure has been all over the place. I have a tentative diagnosis of Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome, which affects both BP and pulse, and mine is the hyperadrenergic side of it, so my pulse and BP skyrocket upon standing, while most folks will see a drop in BP and pulse. Mine goes sky high, then slowly comes back down. But when they gave me BP meds for that, when I’d lay down, my BP and pulse would drop dangerously low. So I ended up having to take BP meds but at the same time had to prop myself up to sleep so I never laid flat. It was crazy.
Since starting the steroids, however, my BP is not dropping low any longer. In fact, it stays right on the borderline of hypertension now even when I’m laying down and goes pretty high when I”m moving around. So to combat that side effect of the steroids, I am taking a blood pressure medication – two, actually: Bystolic 10mg once per day and lisinopril 5mg once per day about four hours later. These two work together to control the orthostitic intolerance and the POTS symptoms and so far, since starting the fludricortisone and the prednisone, my BP has remained mostly steady at 125/75 – 135/85, though my pulse tends to run on the low side – but that’s okay for the situation.
So while I technically do not have high blood pressure by itself, the POTS and orthostatic intolerance both are treated by the BP meds, and the steroids cause high BP, so this is a solution that works for me and has caused almost zero side effects in the past four weeks. Yay!
My point in sharing it is, when you start new drugs, it’s important to try to start one drug at a time, so you know which drugs are doing what. I started prednisone before starting the fludricortisone, and so we know it’s the pred that causes the BP issues – but some people get it on the FL too… I don’t, but you might. So always try to start new meds one medication at a time so you know which ones might cause problems. Work with your doc to monitor side effects and determine if the side effects warrant treatment or a change in meds. For me, it was both – we tried three different BP meds before getting the combo that worked for me with no side effects (I had also tried carvidolol (sp?) but it made my POTS symptoms worse!)
DEPRESSION
I have had bouts of clinical depression in my past and I’ve made no secrets of the fact I was once nearly hospitalized for depression many years ago. I watch for the signs and symptoms closely now, and do everything I can to get out of it when I can. A few years back, I went back on antidepressants, back when I was in and out of the hospital and the cellulitis and stuff was going on. I was on antidepressants for two years that time, and they helped. I’m off them now and hope to stay off of them, but dealing with all these medical things can be straining on a person who already is prone to clinical depression. I have to watch my mood closely. It’s easy to get overwhelmed. It’s easy to see how much you’ve lost and how much your life has changed. Any ‘normal’ person would be depressed as it is, but to add clinical depression on top of it, it’s easy to strain the boundaries.
Give yourself permission to be depressed sometimes if you’re dealing with a medical condition. We all get that way. But when the depression lingers, it can cause symptoms and side effects that might mimic problems with your conditions that are not really related to your conditions. Depression can cause lethargy, pain, tiredness, aching, sleep disorders, mood disorders and more. Be absolutely certain any depression symptoms are treated as such so you can focus on the real issues. I know I’m dealing with a little bit of depression right now because I’m off the pain meds so my head is clear and not fuzzy. When my head is clear, when I’m not overcome with pain that takes my entire focus, then I realize just how much I’ve lost, how behind I am on everything I want to do, how much time has been wasted, etc… and that gets me spinning downward emotionally.
I have to make a concerted effort to remind myself that though I’ve lost a lot, I’m regaining a lot too… I focus on the good, the positive, the changes. Each time I take a step forward but then a side effect happens with a med, it’s hard not to cry. It’s hard to get your hopes up and think some drug that makes you feel good for a week is a miracle only to have it ‘settle’ down and stop working as well and you feel like you’re starting over.
Then there’s the invisible illness aspect of it, when you often look mostly healthy and people don’t know why you’re having so many problems. The invisible illnesses are tough on anyone, and autoimmune is probably one of the toughest, ’cause it just beats your body up from the inside out.
Give yourself permission to ask for help. Depression is a real medical condition – it’s not a weakness – it’s not something you can ‘control’. If you don’t make enough insulin, you can’t just ‘think’ yourself into making it; the same is true for the hormones and chemicals released that cause depression. Feeling better emotionally means you are stronger to take care of yourself physically too. Taking care of the depression on a physical basis and on a mental/emotional basis is an absolute must for effective treatment of any other condition.
DIET
I cannot stress enough the benefits of choosing the right diet and sticking to it. For the adrenal insufficiency and for the hypothyroidism, the diet that works best is a high-good fats, moderate protein and low carbohydrate diet, as gluten-free as possible, with no caffeine or fermented foods/liquids. The diet is as natural as possible, as unprocessed as I can get it.
It’s a tough diet right at first, because everything tasted a bit bland to me. I craved salt. I craved potatoes big time. I’m not a sugar/sweets person, but I love starches, potatoes, corn, breads, chips… OMG, chips… I miss chips. But after about two weeks on the diet, suddenly, things started to taste different. I think it’s true what they say about carbs and processed and chemical laden foods that are used to ‘enhance’ flavor really do ruin our tastebuds. Vegetables have never tasted so sweet. Butter that I used to glob on things and soak stuff in now takes only a small portion to give me excellent flavor. I’ve been using fresh spices when possible, because you can get some health benefits from that too. I’ve also been using a food dehydrator to make very flavorful spices and additives on my own, like dried onions and dehydrated tomatoes that are like sun-dried tomatoes that I pack in my own olive oil and spices for cooking. I even have made my own thinly sliced, perfectly peppered beef jerky.
I’m losing weight. I’m feeling more energy. Food is more satisfying. I’ve cheated a couple of times, and every time, I say, “Never again!” It’s not worth it. It takes so long to get back to ‘normal’ after a cheat that it’s just not worth it. Plus, I’m learning to love foods I’ve never eaten before. I adore artichoke hearts – I’d never had them before! Who knew they were so good? And asparagus cooked with some cream, lemon juice and hard Parmesan is divine! Eggplant? OMG… fried eggplant was so scrummy! Garlic and I are on a romantic interlude too.
The other thing I like about the diet is that it helps put me in control of my own body. It helps me stay focused on my health when I spend a good portion of my time planning meals, making menus for my family to go shopping for, cooking with my son (he’s quite the little gourmet chef these days!), and then eating something I know is good for me and is adding to my health and not taking away from it. My family has all lost weight or maintained it, and they are all reaping the benefits from the diet too, not the least of which is my cooking or my recipes that I’m making for them to cook. I’ve become quite the recipe queen myself, concocting some failures, but mostly successes along the way. I’m working on a low-carb blog too…(It’s really rough right now, so bear with me while I find the time to work on it)… eventually.
Food can be medicinal, and there are a lot of ‘ills’ in the world that can be improved by nothing more than a diet change. High cholesterol, high blood pressure, certain types of type II diabetes, heart problems, kidney problems, adrenal problems, hormone problems… many of these conditions can be improved by doing nothing more than changing the diet to the right diet for your body and health. That’s not to say food is a cure-all. But it’s definitely got the power to do more damage than good when not used properly and a healthy diet is proven to work for improving all sorts of health ills. It’s proactive. It’s not hard – it just takes some adjusting at first.
SLEEP
I hate to sleep. I hate the feeling of waking up groggy. I hate the feeling of falling asleep. I have really vivid real scary dreams sometimes and then just really odd disturbing dreams other times. I used to always wake up in pain, so falling asleep and pain were linked in my mind too – still are. But if there is one thing that makes the biggest difference in my life and how I feel both physically and emotionally, it’s either getting too much, not enough, or not good quality sleep. Without the right amount of sleep, the body is a mess.
You absolutely must take measures to sleep properly, at least 6 hours, preferably 6-10 hours when you’re ill, at a minimum, but no more than about 10-12 hours or you have other problems. Your schedule should be consistent as possible, so your body’s cycles of adrenaline, hormones, and other chemicals are regulated at about the same levels throughout the day. Sleep is the single most important factor in how I feel – more than diet, more than meds, more than anything… if you aren’t sleeping, talk to your doctor. If you’re waking up groggy and tired after a full night’s sleep, have a sleep study done. Find out why. My best friend has obstructive sleep apnea… she didn’t know and has probably from the sleep study they did had it for years. She was, as she said and I agree with her, “Dying by inches…” The difference treatment for the sleep apnea has made in her is like night and day, and all her other medical conditions have improved when her sleep improved too.
You simply must sleep regularly, good sleep, on a consistent schedule. It’s the best habit you can get into for your health, but particularly so if you have a chronic illness.
I’m going to sign off now, because I could just go on and on. I will too, but I’ll save some of it for later posts. This is really my personal blog and it’s supposed to be more about my writing and writing ventures, and know that I am still writing and am working on my second novel, first crime novel, right now, while doing all the other stuff. It’s just this health stuff when it rears itself ugly little head, sometimes takes first chair.
If you made it this far, I’m impressed. What’s wrong with you? I’m really not that interesting! Ha!
Love you all,
Michy
