Sunday, August 2, 2009
You should count on me posting much more regularly now. I took an unexpected hiatus.
Life has been throwing a lot at us. After my dad passed away in late June, my husband has been needing to go into work early/stay at work late and I have been very tired. I'm also having trouble keeping up with the demands of my kids and my house.
I have had a temporary medical condition with low adrenaline since Fall 2007. It makes me very tired. I was even unable to sit up and hug my husband when he left for a trip yesterday in the middle of a nap that I desperately needed. It took me until this past spring to feel like I've had normal energy, but after my dad died, I suffered a setback.
If there is a lot of stress in my life, I tend to get extremely tired because I have barely enough adrenaline to cover it. Things were improving until recently.
My husband had an upcoming business trip following a weekend that we were supposed to be at an out-of-town, but driveable, family event. Running all of the scenarios of whether all of us should go, one parent takes two kids or whether one of us should go was very stressful. As it turned out, David went this weekend and will be jetting off to his business trip directly afterwards.
Pretty much what has been happening is, if the kids don't have camp or some other activity first thing in the morning, I get up and then end up crashing on the floor until sometime about mid-morning. The kids are allowed to watch TV and eat cereal until I'm conscious.
I have had to resort to this against my will. We are the kind of parents that limit screen time and revel in our children's creativity when they are not plugged in. We also do a lot of outside play and go swimming at the town lake on an almost daily basis.
Today was another one of those days though. If I try to force myself up with the kids, I end up taking a nap later in the day or when my kids had camp, as soon as I would drop them off I would come home and take to my floor...in order to be able to function at a very minimal level later in the day.
I keep telling myself to just get up with them and take a nap later as needed. I'm going to go back to my doctor and he's going to check my blood again this week. I want to make sure my adrenaline is still in the normal range and hope that things get better again soon.
Today was no exception. I had visions of getting up with the kids this morning and jumping full-force into cleaning up my cluttered house. I've made a decision that we will no longer live in this mess, even if the kitchen and bathrooms are clean and sanitary.
Well, no. I slept in again. I was planning to clean like a dynamo in the AM, watch Mass on TV ('cause I will NOT take my brood with me to church by myself), take my kids grocery shopping, out for ice cream and then go swimming...all before dinner. What ended up happening is, once I got conscious, I did some laundry, cleaned up the kitchen from the night before and THEN went grocery shopping. After shopping it was 6pm! Surprisingly, no one complained about the lack of swimming. Thankfully, the clouds looked ominous enough that the kids didn't even think about swimming as they hate thunderstorms.
I said to myself, what the heck and took my kids out for ice cream...at dinner time...because they had been so helpful at the grocery store. Sure enough, the ice cream held out their appetites long enough for me to put away the perishable groceries and then make a feast of ramen noodles!
These are probably the farthest thing from a healthy dinner, but heck, I love them! Lilly had just had them at a friend's house yesterday and put the bug in my ear...or in my tastebuds? Yuck...
They ate them with the 4-piece set of easy-to-use, dishwasher-safe, resusable chopsticks that Lilly had convinced me to buy. I threw in a bowl of peas for them to share just so they wouldn't lose their memory that Mom always serves vegetables with dinner, even after having dessert first.
So, 4 Dairy Queen "smalls", ramen noodles and a movie on TV later, I'm going to go tuck in my darlings. Tomorrow is another chance for me to get up on time!
2 comments:
Hmmm....this post interests me because I had a problem last fall with low sodium, and my doctor said that he thought my adrenal glands weren't working correctly. However, they were never able to come to a definitive conclusion, and I'm still exhausted all the time. They never checked my adrenaline that I know of. Interesting. I think I should ask about this.
Every day I tell myself all the same things that you do, and every day, after I feed my kids and get them dressed, I end up conking out on the couch until 11:00 A.M. Now that I'm pregnant, it's much worse.
My kids love ramen noodles, and so do I! I know they aren't healthy, but they're good!
Hi Heather! Yes, talk to your doctor about it. I had had a really bad asthma flare and took large doses of prednisone for it (per my pulmonologist). When the flare got better, I started feeling totally exhausted and could not function at all. My general practitioner then took a blood test and checked my cortisol levels and ACTH (I think) to see if the high doses had caused adrenaline insufficiency. She was absolutely right! Mention to your doctor that he thought your adrenal glands weren't working well and ask him to check those chemicals. Good luck! I can't imagine being pregnant and feeling this way. I hope you can find the answer. Thanks for visiting!
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