Yet another update. Had to drive down to Iowa City to talk with Endo down there today for a second opinion because my endo didn't want to do something that could possibly cause more/different problems. Iowa City hospital is like a mini Mayo Clinic, top notch docs treating all sorts of medical problems from patients all over the world...it's just an uneasy feeling when your referred down there given that fact.
Anyhow, spent a little over an hour talking with this guy, he was going over all the past 5 month labs and tests, asking questions starting from childhood to current, he made his assistant call my allergy doc to see if they had any steroids mixed in with my monthly allergy shots that may have been the reason throwing cortisol levels off...which it wasn't those. I asked why this is such a special case she referred me to you, and he just said it's very unusual to see somebodies cortisol levels this low, no matter what time of day your blood is drawn, it's just consistently low all the time and that's not normal. So he is running labs on a blood draw I did before leaving to check for low iron since he said in very rare cases when a body doesn't absorb and utilize all the iron, it can make deposits which can interfere with the signal the pituitary gland is putting out to the boys to make more T. Also told me unfortunately there is no test they can perform to test JUST the cortisol production, it was such a rare test even 20 yrs ago, they stopped making the medicine needed to perform it.
BUT bright side, he said looking over everything, and depending on blood work let's get things going to start giving artificial T once I get your labs back. Gave me the choice of pellets, patches, gel, injections. Told him I wanted injections, so HE wants to start me on 100ml/wk and go like that for a few months to see where my levels go. I asked him about doing half doses twice a week to help cut down on estrogen conversion or riding the hormonal roller coaster, he just said right now I want you to follow this once a week protocol, I want to see where your at a few days after your shot and where your at a day before your shot so I can monitor your highest and lowest levels. Once he can establish a pattern, once we can find a level I feel good at that doesn't involve any charting, graphs, but how I feel, if I want to switch over to two small doses a week, he doesn't have a problem with that, but give him a few months to get results he needs before doing my own thing.
So light at the end of the tunnel perhaps?? We'll see, seems lately just when I think I'm home free, something else weird happens. Glad they're being this thorough and making sure I don't have any other weird underlying problems. I also asked early on, what would the harm be in trying test injections vs treating the low cortisol, and just like I had read he told me that treating cortisol is Pandora's box, and it opens up a whole lot of problems with other side effects when they don't nail it down right away for exacting dosages and exact times to administer doses...like with me working out, I would need a higher than normal dose shortly after than typical....whereas T rteplacement can be stopped at anytime and they can deal with the side effects of getting body to restart production, so the T replacement is the safer place to start to see what will happen.
One kinda funny thing, he said you know, most doctors would look at all your symptoms and suggest you do anti depressants...I said yeah, been down that road and aint going back since the side effects of SSRI'
s are worse than problem they're supposed to treat
