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10:41am May 11, 2014

So I definitely have a cold and it’s definitely annoying as hell because that’s what colds do.

But I’m also on double my dose of steroids – which adds up to 1 mg (10 mL) in the morning, 0.5 mg (5 mL) in the evening of dexamethasone.  And it’s making all the difference in the world.  Like I feel under the weather, but I don’t feel deathly ill the way I used to feel with even a more minor cold than this.  I haven’t even had to contemplate an ER trip yet, and hopefully I won’t have to.  Last fall I got a cold too mild to almost even qualify as a cold, but I ended up in the emergency room because it felt like breathing took too much effort.  And they kept saying “but you’re not sick enough to have symptoms as severe as you’re describing, you barely even qualify as sick at all”.  But I was sick enough, if you factor in adrenal insufficiency.  Getting a cold depletes cortisol, and if you’re not making more cortisol, that’s a problem.

But with the dexamethasone, I feel under the weather but nothing I can’t handle.  Hopefully it will stay this way.

This also explains the day I had my tube replaced.  I was walking down the hall at the hospital, and I was dragging my feet and weaving all over the corridors.  I was afraid I looked drunk, and I couldn’t explain why I couldn’t move right.  Because there’s no reason.  But now I understand, because that night is when the sore throat started – I was starting to get sick and it was wearing down my cortisol.  No more weaving or foot-dragging since I started stress-dosing.

Not that I’m going to push it by exercising or anything, until the cold is over and I’m back to normal.  My very first adrenal crisis was set off by a very minor bug I had, where I was trying to push through it instead of resting.  So I have a healthy respect for this now.