Hi all. I'm new here and thought i'd share my story.
I've had CFS/FM since i was 22 in 2000, when i got extremely sick with digestive problems (of liver/gallbladder/pancreatic origin). I lost weight to 43kg (5'9 male)
Since then its been pretty up and down over the years. I had a few better years during 05-07, and was able to travel again on public transport like trains and planes, but still very limited energy with needing to rest inbetween everything.
Always been a very allergic person, but since 2000 all my allergies and intolerances and chemical sensitivities became gradually worse. They diagnosed low
testosterone in 2000, apparently I had zero.
This year my stamina and energy gradually declined, i got less and less able to do things. From the symptoms i had i suspected adrenal problems and started using licorice root powder. It really helped a lot at frist, but after 10 months on it, and always increasing the dose, it's effectiveness wore off and i started crashing hard. I ended up in ER 6 times in 6 weeks, shaking, freezing cold to the core, extreme muscle weakness, high anxiety, and severe orthostatic intolerance (crashing blood pressure on standing).
They finally did an insulin tolerance
test, which THEY say is apparently the gold standard, better than the ACTH stim
test, for testing adrenal probs. They inject insulin on morning fasting, and measure blood levels of glucose and cortisol over the next couple hours. Well instead of my cortisol rising as it should in response to the severe hypoglycemic attack the insulin brought on, it plummeted throughout the
test.
Here is the result:
10am:
Fasting blood glucose: 4.7
Fasting blood cortisol: 471
10:30am:
5.7units rapid acting insulin
10:40am (+10min)
Blood glucose: 2.0
10:50am (+20min)
Blood Glucose: 1.2 (by this stage i was almost going into a coma, unable to speak and was
injected with sugar twice to bring me out of it.)
11:00am (+30min)
Blood Glucose: 3.9
Serum Cortisol: 358
11:30am (+60min)
Blood Glucose: 4.8
Serum Cortisol: 409
12:00pm (+90min)
Blood Glucose: 5.3
Serum Cortisol: 312
12:30 (+120min)
Blood Glucose: 7.4
Serum Cortisol: 250
The bottom of the result said the cortisol should have gone to >550 and kept going up after the hypo. Instead to deal with it, it used up whatever cortisol I had, but didn't initiate a stress response, indicating hypopituitarism.
I don't know why my body went this way. I assume its to do with the years of stress of constant pain and fatigue of CFS, and/or the HPA axis dysfunction got worse and worse.
Either way, im having a really hard time on cortisone, but have to have it. It causes alot of upper abdo pain, and have to dose it every 2 hours or so. I thought if i ever had to go on cortisone it would give me miracle energy, but it sure hasn't. It's just keeping me out of ER, which isn't much of an accomplishment.
Any opinions would be appreciated. Thanks. ~Chris.