December Photo Project: Day 23

Today is a bit of an unusual photo... it's actually an excuse to say thank you for praying for me and to give you an update on my health since so many of you have prayed for me in this area.  If you aren't aware, quite a few years ago now, I was diagnosed with Primary Adrenal Insufficiency. (Fun history fact: it's the same disease that JFK had, but kept very well hidden during his presidency) It is considered a rare disease in which the outer cortex of the adrenal glands fails and the body stops producing cortisol...a hormone necessary for life.  Cortisol is a stress hormone: whenever your body is under any type of stress (life stress, sickness, happy stress, emotional stress, etc...) it produces cortisol and prevents your body from going into shock.  For those with Adrenal Insufficiency, our bodies produce none, so we must rely on a low dose of steroids to give us all we need.  For several years, I was very stable.  Like most AI patients, I would need to pace myself and get plenty of rest and take extra medicine when I was sick, but it really wasn't too big of a deal.  But two years ago, I started to spiral.  No matter what I tried, I constantly struggled to make it through the day.   I have been exhausted all the time...and my exhaustion has been accompanied by deep, sharp, shooting bone pain, low-grade fevers, debilitating brain fog and would, more days than naught, leave me on the couch.  It's been a real struggle that many people have been praying for.

A few weeks ago, I started to realize that there was a real potential that I wasn't actually absorbing my steroid tablets.  Maybe it's my struggles with celiac or maybe just years of being on a steroid that has done damage to my stomach...not sure... but I knew my digestive system has issues.  A few weeks ago, I was extremely discouraged one afternoon and I cried out to the Lord in a torrent of hot messy tears and during that prayer, an idea came to me that maybe I should try to inject all my steroid.  I actually had never heard of this, but I started looking on an Adrenal disease facebook group that I'm a part of to see if there was anyone else who had done this... turns out there was!  Lack of absorption can actually be a fairly common problem and the solution is to use insulin needles to inject the steroid...and best yet...I could find everything I needed right here in Mbale!  (even a box for sharps! ha!)  

So for the past few weeks, I have been injecting all my steroid (following a circadian rhythm dosing schedule, so it ends up being 7 injections a day) and I can hardly believe how much better I feel!  It's been amazing!  I have had zero bone pain, zero brain fog, much more energy, and my blood pressure has risen so that I have no more dizzy spells when standing up!  It truly has been an act of God's grace to me to bring me up out of the pit that I've been in for the last two years.  I can still get tired (sometimes very tired), but it is NOT the same kind of painful/can't see my way through to even communicate with the family tired.  So while I'll have to pace myself the rest of my life (and that's okay...not a bad thing!), I feel like I've been granted a huge measure of healing these past few weeks!  And to top it all off...I'm taking less steroid than I was in pill form!  Don't need as much anymore! 

Some people in my situation will end up getting an insulin pump and using it to pump the hydrocortisone instead.  Perhaps, if God wills and the insurance company will pay then that will be in my future.  (I hope so!!)

In the meantime, I am ever so thankful for this answer to many prayers and ask that you continue to pray for God to protect and sustain me!  Adrenal failure is no fun...it's a beast of a disease...but I can really see how even this, God turns for his glory and for my good.  Much praise and glory to God!