So on 02/11/2012 I crashed pretty hard. I felt it coming. My vision started going first. It got blurry and going all tunnel vision around the edges. Problem was I was driving and was 2 hours from home. I took 40 mg hydrocortisone right away since I had been backing off on it I wanted to make sure I wasn't crashing on it. And because I didn't know what else to do. Then I started feeling really heavy. I started feeling as if I were going to fall asleep. Fast. So I pulled over.
I told my husband (who can't drive because of his epilepsy) that I just needed to wait a minute for my hydrocortisone to kick in. Then apparently I went to sleep for about 15 minutes. I woke up and drove across the street to a gas station. I got out of the car to go get some sodium. This was very difficult. I could barely walk. My legs were very weak. But I knew I needed to get my blood moving. So I went inside and bought a bad of chips and a Gatorade. I sat and ate some chips then felt a little better. We got back on the road.
About an hour later I felt back to where I was when I started on the trip. So it was what I would classify as a crash. I would also say it was just like the ones I had when I first started going on hydrocortisone. So I don't think it is the POTS. It was like the extreme fatigue I would feel when I would have to go lay down when they switched my meds in Boston, too. I called the Endo today and I'm going to seriously push on his end for a rescue steroid that can be given by someone else. Because Jason might have had to have given that to me and he couldn't have given me a pill. I might have thought it was the POTS if I hadn't felt it before when I was going through the hydro phases in the summer.
This is what I wrote on the POTS page on Facebook:
I hate having no cortisol and POTS. It makes it very confusing as to which is causing the "crashes" and how to treat it. And which doctor to call. They are very similar. Each doctor responds with, "Well, did you call your other doctor?" Ugh! I have to treat the dysautonomia to make the correct signals go to the pituitary for the pituitary to send the correct signal to the adrenals to produce the cortisol so my body can function. But in the mean time, I have to artificially stimulate my cortisol by taking steroids but not too much steroids because that could permanently damage my adrenals which aren't damaged they just aren't receiving the signals. But 5mg too little makes me crash and 5mg too much makes me nauseous and have a headache and I never know from minute to minute what that line is because it depends on my period and what level of activity I'm doing and how much I've eaten and the direction the wind is blowing.
I told my husband (who can't drive because of his epilepsy) that I just needed to wait a minute for my hydrocortisone to kick in. Then apparently I went to sleep for about 15 minutes. I woke up and drove across the street to a gas station. I got out of the car to go get some sodium. This was very difficult. I could barely walk. My legs were very weak. But I knew I needed to get my blood moving. So I went inside and bought a bad of chips and a Gatorade. I sat and ate some chips then felt a little better. We got back on the road.
About an hour later I felt back to where I was when I started on the trip. So it was what I would classify as a crash. I would also say it was just like the ones I had when I first started going on hydrocortisone. So I don't think it is the POTS. It was like the extreme fatigue I would feel when I would have to go lay down when they switched my meds in Boston, too. I called the Endo today and I'm going to seriously push on his end for a rescue steroid that can be given by someone else. Because Jason might have had to have given that to me and he couldn't have given me a pill. I might have thought it was the POTS if I hadn't felt it before when I was going through the hydro phases in the summer.
This is what I wrote on the POTS page on Facebook:
I hate having no cortisol and POTS. It makes it very confusing as to which is causing the "crashes" and how to treat it. And which doctor to call. They are very similar. Each doctor responds with, "Well, did you call your other doctor?" Ugh! I have to treat the dysautonomia to make the correct signals go to the pituitary for the pituitary to send the correct signal to the adrenals to produce the cortisol so my body can function. But in the mean time, I have to artificially stimulate my cortisol by taking steroids but not too much steroids because that could permanently damage my adrenals which aren't damaged they just aren't receiving the signals. But 5mg too little makes me crash and 5mg too much makes me nauseous and have a headache and I never know from minute to minute what that line is because it depends on my period and what level of activity I'm doing and how much I've eaten and the direction the wind is blowing.
No comments:
Post a Comment