How can not blogging for 4 days feel like an eternity?

Hello everyone!! Every day I tell myself that, "Today will be the day that I take/have the time to get back to that crazy techno-blog thingie and tell everyone hello and share whatever it is I'm suppose to be sharing. (I'm pretty sure any past and present difficulties in the GI body section would not make for good "blogging" material. OK, now I'm really grossed out by what I just wrote. But, if you are reading this, then you know me...so...). Well, a friend, who will go unnamed (tammy) politely told me that I need to update my blog. I think she actually said, "Lady! You've got to update your blog!!!!" So, here I am.

The last time we "met" Rod and I were heading off to a movie and I had just received a phone call from this amazingly smart and busy specialist on a Friday night. She shared that the last blood test was in that had been sent to the Mayo Clinic. That test was done to make the final determination of what was going on that caused me to get so sick. I do not have Addison's Disease. I also do not have a pituitary gland. The actual diagnosis is: Panhypopituitaryism. I started "googling" Panhypopituitaryism and the definition is horrible and quite frankly it doesn't really say what's going on with me. So, I'm going to do my own. Are you ready? Definition of "Panhypopituitaryism" by Annette Markin.

I don't have a pituitary gland. I had one at one time or I would have been unable to get pregnant with the boys. If you don't have a pituitary (that now and for ever-more shall be shortened to "pit" because I hate trying to keep spelling it correctly), anyway, if you don't have a pit you feel rotten. You don't have enough cortisol, aldosterone and thyroid. Cortisol is kind of a stress hormone, aldosterone helps regulate salt and water and thyroid regulates metabolism. So, if you don't have those (yes, Rod came in and filled in with the really big words), basically your whole system is off-kilter. So, since my system was completely off, everything went haywire like, being really tired, having trouble eating, muscle weakness, vomiting, general GI stuff. As some of you can tell, many of those symptoms are also ones that we see with Pulmonary Hypertension and are also side effects of Flolan. So, now, so much of this makes sense. I could have had trouble with "Mr. Pit." for quite awhile and we all kept assuming it was the PH and/or the Flolan.

So, now what happens? DRUGS!!!!!! Drugs (the prescription kind....calm down everyone...) have been MY friend ever since I was diagnosed with PH. Now that we know what else has been going on, all we have to do is replace all of the "stuff" that I have not had for however long. So, now, for the first time in at least 2-3 months, I'm getting steroids, some thyroid, some potassium and a few other things. I'm not quite leveled out with the mix yet, but that is ok, it will take a few months. After feeling like I have for this long, I'm ok with giving things some time. Don't get me wrong though. Even though we still have to "play around" with the levels and such, I still feel better than I have in YEARS!! I actually ironed Rod a shirt for work last night and today for work tomorrow! That may seem simple and many of you may be wondering why I don't just send the shirts out. The deal is, since being diagnosed with PH, there are so many things that I can no longer do around the house and am unable to help Rod with chores. Ironing a shirt for Rod for work every day was the one thing that I could still do for him. Simple or not, it was and is important to me.

OK. That is my new novel. Hopefully if you decided to read this incredibly long thing, you either had a lot of coffee, patience and/or nice, long breaks. Thank you all for your time, love and friendship. This has been and continues to be a very humbling experience. I mean, I even heard from Jenny W. who I use to teach with who has even moved to another city !!(maybe state too, I can never remember the difference between Sioux and South Sioux...)

All my love to all of you.
Annette