Dear body, I know you’re stubborn like me, dramatic, and complex… but you’re getting to be a bit more than I can even handle, and I would appreciate it if we could call a truce and work together for a while.

Do you ever wonder how much your body can physically and emotionally sustain? I have been asking myself this question this week, and I don’t normally think this way, because let’s be honest… My body has seen it’s fair share of battle. Which is why I so naively thought to myself, “it can’t get much worse than this” And then I was so incredibly wrong, that’s when I received another diagnosis, adrenal insuffiency.

HOW CAN I GET ANY MORE COMPLICATED!!? 😫

It has been one hell of a week my friends, let me just tell you… Although I am still so positive and in much better spirits than two-three days ago, being told a vital organ died in your body, while already battling and endless fight of rare cancer, and not knowing how to handle life already, is … For lack of a better word, devastating.

We all have two adrenals, (I have only one now, I had to have the other removed during my first surgery to remove the pheochromocytoma tumor, which also produces the same adrenaline hormones as the gland) these two little glands sit on top of your kidneys, and kind of play a huge role in your body, let me break it down:

The adrenal cortex—produces hormones that are vital to life, such as cortisol (which helps regulate metabolism and helps your body respond to stress) and aldosterone (which helps control blood pressure).
The adrenal medulla—the inner part of the gland—produces nonessential (that is, you don’t need them to live) hormones, such as adrenaline (which helps your body react to stress).

The pheochromocytoma tumors ALSO produce these hormones, such as adrenaline, which is why it was so important to debulk as many metastisized tumors back in May, and continue to treat with high doses of blood pressure and heart rate meds to lessen the effect it has on my body.

However! When my adrenal slowly started dying, we had big problems. Now my body was being fed with episodes of too much adrenaline, and then slowly no cortisol… Which as you read above, is essential to life. Also, as you can kind of understand… Conflicting with one another. I feel as though one person can only be so close to death so many times, it’s becoming cruel, and quite frankly terrifying. Not to mention, when you’re unaware… Your body starts slowly shutting down, and you literally feel as though you’re dying. So this week was very special, a very particularly hard and fast rollercoaster that we are only now slowing down from, once again.

What now?

Well, once my endocrinologist (who I am now referring to as my super doctor) from the super hospital figured this all out, he had to immediately put me on a synthetic version of what our bodies produce naturally, cortisol. Since I can no longer do so, I will now have to be on this steroid drug for the remainder of my life to control what others will have done for them naturally. As I have an endocrine cancer, I knew this would be a possibility one day, but I had hope that this wouldn’t happen, and I honestly had no idea the complexities of it alll until it happened to me. It is truly one hard pill to swallow!

With replacing cortisol in pill form, it gets tricky… You no longer have the ability to produce cortisol when you’re stressed, excited, any of the natural functions your body goes through, when these things happen normally you will get more cortisol production to counter act the effects, now that I don’t produce any, I have to decide when I need to take more cortisol medication in order to control my blood pressure from now DROPPING.

So, the pheo makes my BP rocket, and the adrenal failure makes it plummet, and taking too much cortisol can make stimulate my tumors too much, and not taking enough can leave my body in dangerous need of it. It’s a delicate balancing act … And a lot of responsibility. A learning curve for sure, one day at a time. I think this one was just so much harder because of the physical hardship it has added, my body has been under so much duress, and the yoyo effect and all of these continuous new drugs, side effects mounting.

Life is hard, but it is our challenges that make us continue to realize our strength.

Pheo VS Fabulous

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#netcancer #awareness #pheochromocytoma #AI #lifeisbeautiful