Tomorrow evening I am going to have an MRI of my brain. I am not looking forward to it, I am not in love with small spaces, but I also don’t do well with sedatives so I just have to deal with it and get through it. So, why am I having an MRI? Well, about this time last year I started having odd symptoms, mostly gynecological in nature. I had just lost Andrew, who was stillborn at 21 weeks, so the doctor’s didn’t really thing much of it when things were a little off. As time went on and I was in more pain they decided I had PCOS. They ran lots of blood tests and discovered my hormones were low, so they sent me to an endocrinologist, basically a hormone doctor. She ran more tests and found out that my adrenal glands, which are responsible for making most of your hormones were not working right. There is a disease called Adrenal Insufficiency where your adrenal glands pretty much don’t work at all, which can be really serious and life threatening because those adrenal glands produce hormones that control blood pressure and insulin. So if they don’t work right it can put you into an adrenal crisis where your blood sugar and blood pressure fall dramatically and you can go into a coma. The only way to treat that condition is lifelong steroids, and hormone replacements. Fortunately, I am not in adrenal insufficiency yet. I am close though. So, they are doing this MRI to check and see if maybe my pituitary gland is damaged. The Pituitary tells your adrenal glands to work, so you can see why that would be important. If it is damaged there isn’t anything they can do except put you on steroids, but at least then we would know why my adrenals aren’t working. There is only a slim chance that this is the case. The most likely cause for my adrenals not working as they should is stress. Like long term stress. Your adrenal glands produce a hormone called cortisol during stressful situations. It gives you the extra boost of energy you need to deal with stress. If you are stressed for too long, your body overproduces cortisol and then if you are stressed long enough it just stops producing cortisol at all. My body is not producing enough cortisol, which would suggest it has been under stress for a while and is just giving up.

That sounds bad huh? Well, it’s not wonderful news, but I am thankful we have caught it before it got really bad and I ended up collapsing or something. So now I just have to figure out how to reverse this and take care of myself. Not sure yet how I’m going to do that, but after the first of the year I’m going to go to another doctor who will hopefully be able to give me some steps to take. I am needed by so many, I have to take the steps to take care of myself. I cannot keep putting myself on the back burner and keep on going. I know none of the moms and wives out there can relate. hahaha. At any rate, prayers are much appreciated as I go through this MRI tomorrow and in the weeks ahead as I figure out the next steps to take to take better care of myself.