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What an Addison’s Crisis looks like, acute adrenal failure

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A few weeks ago, I came home from church to find my mom more tired than usual. I had noticed she had been sleeping a lot the last few days and had not joined us for dinner. I made her a sandwich and brought it to her, hoping some food would make her feel better. She told me thank you and how good it looked, took a bite, and then suddenly fell face down into the sandwich as if she was collapsing into pure exhaustion. I woke her up and tried to talk to her to find out what was wrong. She said she was tired, and her stomach was upset and then she tried to explain that she might have got one of her pills mixed up. As she told me about how the tiny, white ones look just alike, I realized immediately, she was referring to her steroids.

My mom has Addison’s Disease, otherwise known as total adrenal failure. Her body does not make what she needs, so she is totally dependent on steroids. If she does not take them for an extended period of time, this could cause brain damage or death.

 

At that moment, I did not know if she actually had missed any, or if so, how many. I just knew something was not right. I said a prayer, and in an instant, the doorbell rang. It was my brother-in-law, the chiropractor. I asked him to come upstairs and have a look. He used his cell phone to track my mom’s eyes. She did not follow. He got out the blood pressure cuff to check her blood pressure. It read something like 40/80.

We put her in the car and drove her to the ER. The ER did not waste any time with blood pressure reading like that. They immediately had her in the back. I shouted out, ‘this woman has total adrenal failure. She is hydrocortisone dependent. I have a feeling that she either missed some dosages, or has been so sick to her stomach, that she has lost the medicine.”

As they asked me questions, I tried to answer in a blur. “She has not been herself for about three days. I just thought she was tired or had a bug….She was diagnosed with adrenal failure in 2008. She takes 30 mg of hyrdrocortisol a day….She is allergic to latex, and codeine…”

Unlike so many times before, the admitting doctor heard everything I said. Maybe I have finally learned how to explain the situation.

Before even running tests, they set up an IV and got fluids in, and then steroids. At the same time, her temperature was dropping. She was mentally confused. She did not know where she was, her name, the hospital, the date, the year even. She could barely make a sentence and kept falling asleep. They set up a heater around her legs and covered her in blankets and began the tests.

Her potassium and cortisol levels were off the chart abnormal. The doctor said, ‘This is textbook, adrenal crisis. I have never seen a clearer case.’ Soon, her kidneys went into failure. The doctor had to call in a critical care physician.


So many doctors see that one page in the textbook and don’t get to ever truly experience acute adrenal failure. Then, when the time comes that someone is in trouble, they don’t know what to do. The symptoms look like so many other things.
Symptoms of acute adrenal failure are: dizziness, extreme drowsiness, high potassium, abdominal pain, GI problems like nausea, vomiting and diarrhea, joint pain. Just think of how many other things those symptoms could point to.
The doctors put her in ICU for three days, then took her to a special care unit for the rest of the week. She has absolutely no memory of this incident. There, she was given something like 100 mg of steroids every 4 hours, or more.
Today, she is fine. She has her steroids set aside from her other medicine so that she never misses a dose. She has an injection in her purse in case she feels the signs of a crisis coming on.
But there is always that one chance, she slips into a crisis again, and has no idea what is going on, or the sense enough to use the injection, or get to a hospital.


She has lived with us for seven years. The diagnosis came in 2008, just a few months after I married my sweetheart. Her weight had gotten down to 72 pounds. She kept having repeated adrenal crises.


She ended up moving in with us just a few months after we got married.

connie heather wedding
She would love to live by herself now. Now that we have learned to manage the disease, this might be possible. But she needs to live close to family for the rest of her life. This disease is just far too dangerous.


Addison’s Disease is very dangerous. April is adrenal disease awareness month. This is a great video to raise awareness of the disease.


Tagged: Addison's crisis, Addison's Disease, Addison's disease awareness month, adrenal failure

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