Adrenal Fatigue - My personal story part 1

During the month of January we are focusing on having a healthy life. The story below is the first part of my own personal story of dealing with adrenal fatigue. This is a deeply personal story to me. I don't share it often, as many people don't seem to understand adrenal fatigue, and I have found it best to keep quiet. I share it only out of my desire to help other Mom's who may be going through similar problems. I know what it is like to search desperately for answers, so I can shed some light for anyone searching it will be worth it to share this story.

In my senior year of high school I started struggling with being really tired. I was home schooled, and every afternoon it was hard to finish all my school because I was so fatigued. My parents took me to a Dr. who diagnosed me with low blood sugar. I started trying to eat more protein on a consistent basis, but it didn’t seem to change much for me. After graduating, I started working in a tea room during the lunch period. I would come home and go straight to bed to sleep, I would be so tired. By that point, my insurance had run out, I was engaged to be married, and so life just continued on in that pattern.

After I was married my husband was surprised to see how many naps I had to take. Three months after being married we were delighted to find out we were expecting our first child. My pregnancy went well, except I fainted during the first trimester at a book sale, which was again contributed to low blood sugar. I had a lot of issues the first few weeks nursing my little boy, but we finally got that under control. Shortly before my six week checkup, I started having severe anxiety, which finally got really bad after seeing a bad car wreck right ahead of me late one night. I couldn’t even drive home I started having such a bad anxiety attack. At that point I told my husband that something was terribly wrong, and started studying all the herbal books I had trying to figure out what was going on. I had never had anxiety before in my life.

I had my midwife test my thyroid at my six week checkup, and she was convinced that would be the problem. It came back slightly off, and she wanted to give me medicine but the Dr. over her said it wasn’t bad enough, and he handed me a prescription for Xanax, something I had never even heard of! My Mother told me it was an anti-anxiety medicine and she was shocked that was what they sent me away with. I went that weekend to get the RX filled, not really understanding that it would just be hiding my true problems to take that medicine, when the Lord blessed me greatly by intervening on my behalf. The pharmacy couldn’t fill the prescription, as the Dr. had not written the prescription strength down for them to fill it. The pharmacist said they had never had that happen before. It gave me the chance to go home and talk to my husband, pray and study all weekend.

I quickly realized that I didn’t want to take that medicine. There had to be something that actually was causing me to have anxiety, and the medicine would not help cure me of that. It would only mask the symptoms. For the next 8 months I struggled more than I ever have in my life, trying to just keep everything together during those intense anxiety attacks. Well meaning friends tried to tell me that I didn’t have enough faith in the Lord because I was having these anxiety attacks. My husband and I wrestled over those statements, and I was prayed over by elders in our church several times trying to figure out what was wrong. Finally I told my husband I couldn’t go on like this anymore, and we went to a MD that specializes in natural medicine. After spending a huge amount of money in her office for visits and different tests, I was diagnosed with having really low adrenal glands. The diagnose took a huge load off of my mind. Finally I had something to work with!

To be continued....