Tag: Adrenal Fatigue

The ups and downs

Published on by sml1dr1 Comment

stay on pathWhat is it about human beings that we are the most inpatient people!  Instant gratification! Give it to me now! I can’t wait!!!

Well… the good news is, Adrenal Fatigue is the sure fire way to teach one to wait, to be patient, to rely on God and others… and to ask for help!  I will say, I’m still terrible at it! I still struggle and I should have accepted, and reached out for, way more help than I did.  I just kept thinking it would get better and I’d be able to do what ever it was that I couldn’t at that moment….that my super powers would suddenly take over and I’d feel well enough to cook, grocery shop, clean my house and do laundry in one fell swoop!! And yet for the better part of the last 6 months, I did the bare minimum and those super powers didn’t show up till 3 weeks ago!!!   I will say, thank God for small miracles and someone brought Instacart to Denver!  If I did nothing else, I could get my groceries delivered from several area stores (including whole foods!!!!)!

But, there is hope to share!  In the beginning, you certainly can barely get out of bed- in this time, ACCEPT HELP!!!! Let your family and friends cook you meals and clean your house and come over and watch movies.  In the grande scheme, it will fill your soul and help you get better! But, there comes a day when you start to feel good… it’s a feeling you’ve forgotten but you’ll remember it the minute it hits! It’s totally amazing! And I promise the good days will come more often and the bad days will slowly fade away.  But one thing I am learning is to savor those good days and keep reminding yourself that they will come… Because the journey of AF brings many ups and downs.  My unsolicited advice? Stay positive!  Stay on your path! Because it is very easy to begin to nitpick what you did to cause the crash, and why did it happen, and you begin to berate yourself for not paying attention to the warning signs… Not that I speak from personal experience or anything! 🙂

In one of my crashes, I found myself in an utter tail spin.  I had strung together 7 fairly good days.  I was being productive at work and resting appropriately, and had even gone for a few runs…  And then the bottom dropped out and I woke up one morning and felt AWFUL!!!!  I went to work, suffered through my day, and come home and began to search the internet for some info on how to fix it.  Well, I found this amazing blog post by Jenni Hulburt.  The picture on her blog said, “Healing in Progress, Please stay on designated trails only!” WOW!!!!  That was powerful to me in that moment.  Healing in progress, stay on your path!  It said to me, to keep walking this path I was on and the healing would come!

It is now April and 6 months into my treatment and I can say, the healing does come.  This week I took a vacation from work.  It was a partial staycation and a 4 day trip for my passion with 7000 of my closest friends!  6 months ago, this would have been the end of me.  But! The days I was home, were AMAZING!  I had great energy, ran around town and did all my errands (hair cut/ color, toes done, waxing!, shopping) and even spent a night out with a very close friend at a loud concert and had some beer!  And I still felt good the next day!  Before, this would have been an utter fail followed by a month of bad days… but it wasn’t!!!!  It was actually very energizing! And, during my 4 day trip away, I did have a mild fatigue through most of the days but this is still AMAZING progress. I was still able to engage in the conference I was at.  I hit my wall on Saturday, surrounded by my closest friends, I began to cry in the middle of an amazing conference session!  The crash from the up I had that morning as I was cheering on a friend for making it to the top of the company!  My AF triggers come out in tears when I have reached my end.  And I humbly sat between 2 of my closest friends and completely felt their love and support and compassion as I tried so hard to gain control of the tears. Thank you dear friends! That moment will forever be etched in my mind! This day I continued to push myself so hard and I later nodded off as we were all sitting by the pool, they were sharing their dreams, I was soaking up their energy! I should have rested and napped in the quiet of the hotel…but I was so happy to be out and around such amazing friends that I wanted to soak up every minute… and it made my soul so happy!  I have been back home now for 24 hours and took several naps and slept 12 hours last night and am now starting to feel good again.

One thing I know, the ups and downs will happen.  It starts with the downs and then 1 random up day shows its beautiful head.  Dear friend, I say to you, keep holding on and riding the waves with grace because eventually the ups overcome the downs! The ups last for longer stretches and you begin to live life again.  You begin to reconnect and rebuild an awesome life!  I call it me 2.0 because I feel as if the pieces of my life are strategically being placed back together like a beautiful watercolor painting.  Some colors belong, and some don’t.  Those that belong find their place in my soul and will live there forever.  Those that don’t, won’t hang around for long… and that is 100% ok-They probably weren’t intended to stay as long as they did!  And as I walk this road and stay on my path, I feel that I am so much better than I was before, and I am grateful that it is happening!

Healing is in progress, my friend.  Stay on the designated trail!

I have WHAAATTT?

Published on by sml1drLeave a comment

IIMG_0009 certainly wish that was my reaction!  To be honest, when I was finally diagnosed, I was ridiculously relieved.  Finally a diagnosis.  A treatment plan, something I could hold on to and battle against.  It was the beginning of a new me!  But to hear where I was, you have to hear how it all started!

This photo was one of the most exhilarating afternoons of my life (that’s me in the orange) I had just completed my first MARATHON!  It was hell! But I was extremely proud. I had an amazing job as a Nurse Manager at a prestigious university hospital in TN.  I had successfully completed a $3 M construction project this year and had become ADDICTED to running and healthy living.  I knew my challenge that year was to run a marathon in December and I KNEW I was healthy enough for it!  As my training progressed, I felt great and knew I could do this. I was fueling appropriately and was on track… until I was out running an 18 miler one Saturday and landed in the middle of a park, unable to go on.  Exhausted, hot, and a bit dehydrated, I laid on the green grass and contemplated why… And the truth was, I had NO IDEA WHY!!!  I made myself get up and eventually got back home… it wasn’t pretty but I got home!  And after that day, I was really not able to run like I had been.  It became a chore, a battle, and I should have listened!  But, I didn’t! I continued on and continued to feel a bit sluggish and tired, and even contemplated not running!  But I didn’t LISTEN!!!  So I approached my marathon day in poor form but ran anyways.  I had a great 1/2 marathon at about a 12 min pace and was feeling good.  Then it all unraveled … BUT I FINISHED! And that’s all I’ll say about that!!!!  The weeks following my run I felt great.  Recovered easily and was back to my 3-4 miles and still proud of what I’d done. Then, at the 3 week mark, I started to feel awful.  I couldn’t walk up a full flight of stairs in my home without stopping 1/2 way and out of breath.  I was tired, crabby, emotional, etc. and I had no idea what was going on.  I saw a Nurse Practitioner who said I probably had some form of DOMS (Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness) and that I should change some dietary things and take some epsom salt baths and it would pass…  Pass it did… but, over the next year and a half, the fatigue passed slowly and I never really felt myself.  I cleansed my diet- soy free, dairy free, gluten free and ate a TON of fruits and veggies, started hot yoga (addicted!) and spent time with some great friends… I began to slowly feel better but had this nagging ache in my right shoulder that wouldn’t go away.

I then found myself living in Denver in May 2013 and the day after I moved, I felt awesome!  My shoulder pain went away and I started to slowly run again (uh…well did a slow walk/ run routine for a bit-HELLO ALTITUDE!) And slowly was feeling better and better.  I was clicking at work-pouring my soul into this new unit and overcoming severe obstacles there.  Major culture changes happened and I kept plugging along and thought it all was behind me.

WRONG!  There was a moment in time when I think my body had enough!  I felt good one moment, and the next, I was D-O-N-E, DONE!!!  I got home from work one night (how I got home, I can’t remember. I know I drove. YIKES!) anyhow… I got home from work, and crawled to the couch, curled up in a fetal position and prayed for rest! I was exhausted and truly thought for a moment, I was in severely bad shape! (OK.  Truthfully, thought I was dying!) We all use the expression, that you feel like you’ve been hit by a freight train?  Yeah, I now KNOW what that really feels like.  No, I wasn’t really hit-but I felt terrible!!!  You sleep for 10 hours a night, but wake up exhausted and want to lay down and sleep some more.  Your brain is in utter slow motion, shut down, and you sit in front of a computer screen and stare for HOURS unable to make the words or movements come! You cry for no reason at the drop of a hat.  You ache!!! OH YOU ACHE!  My joints and muscles hurt and felt like they had a mind of their own. Hello restless leg! WOW! You go to the grocery store and have to leave because you are so overstimulated… and even worse, you stand in front of your full fridge and pantry looking for food and can’t put anything together! And these words don’t even remotely do this justice!  I KNEW there was something severely off and so, I sought help!  I saw a NP at my hospital and had labs drawn- my iron levels were extremely low (transfusion level low) and she gave me 4 weeks to take an iron supplement and get my levels up.  She was sure that was the culprit.  I was quickly unhappy with the answers I was getting… I set out on my own to find the right answers. I saw a naturopath and another MD and finally an amazing Endocrinologist!  And after 2 months, I had an answer! You have “SEVERE” Adrenal Fatigue! WHEW!  Thank God!!!  I could have kissed him!  After talking with the Endo about my symptoms, he asked me to tell him what my last 4 years had been like.  After I related the majority of these years, he looked me in the eye and said, “I’m not a bit surprised you are where you are…”, and then…,”If you hadn’t been taking Juice Plus+, you wouldn’t have lasted this long, and would be in the hospital!”   WHOA!  THANK GOD FOR JUICE PLUS+ (I’ll tell you more about that soon!)

So, what is Adrenal Fatigue, you ask?  Well, I’m not going to rehash what you can read here.  This was the most informative, easy to understand website that was given to me. But I will tell you, in lay-mans terms, that AF is a fairly new, rising diagnosis.  There are many MD’s that don’t believe it exists.  But, they used to say that about Fibromyalgia, and Restless Leg Syndrome, and IBS, and now look at those diseases.  I am a RN and all of these diseases are new since I was in nursing school 15 years ago! Because of our poor SAD diets (standard american diet), we will see more diseases continue to pop up.  AF, however, is not just diet related.  It is STRESS related.  It is essentially, an inability of the adrenal glands to keep up with the demands placed on them and they utterly give up! Given our stress ridden world and our “get ahead” mentality, we are conditioned for this disease.  It is believed that approximately 80% of adult American’s suffer with some form of Adrenal Fatigue!  AMAZING!