The vicious, man-eating common cold is finally in retreat. I'm still blowing my nose and coughing up phlegm, but not nearly as much as I was. This is great news for me since obviously I have no patience for a runny nose and head full of phlegm. Bad news for sales of Kleenex however...
Today marks two weeks being on Muffy. The study protocol requires certain blood tests and other things be done every two weeks. In order to prevent me from having to go back to NIH every two weeks, they worked out what they need with my Endocrinologist here. This is awesome for me since I'm all of 5 minutes from his office. Not that I don't love my Gaggle at NIH, but let's face it - anyone who needs to travel at this time of year has to armour up before they leave the house. And let's just say my armour retired when I did. In addition to seeing my Dr. here every two weeks, I also am in communication with my Dr.'s in Bethesda via phone and e-mail. All the attention and none of the hovering. I love it.
Unfortunately we have hit our first speed bump in the Muffy parking lot. I have not been feeling very well in a variety of ways not attributable to the vicious, man-eating common cold. I could chalk up everything to some reason or other, and nothing really matched up with side effects I was supposed to be looking out for. But I let the Gaggle know anyway. I might be experiencing something called Adrenal Insufficiency (AI) where there are not enough adrenal hormones. As I mentioned before, Muffy doesn't reduce my cortisol levels, it just blocks what the adrenal gland is producing. If I have AI, it means that Muffy is blocking too much. The fix will be a reduction in dose. We should know tomorrow if AI is the culprit. If the culprit isn't AI, then we have to fall back and regroup.
Lesson for today: regulating the body's chemistry is not an exact science. There is some trial and error that happens along the way because the body is such an amazingly complex piece of machinery. I'm thinking we'll just work through this little hiccup and get me feeling more human in very short order.
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