Mis-medicated...sue Caduceus!

Of course, Caduceus himself was innocent.  No need to sue him. It was the doctors who were to blame. It's just that every time I see a caduceus,  I think of this...

Do you remember when I told about my collapse, when we lived in Shell?  (You can refresh your memory starting at this post:  http://therhonsjourney.blogspot.com/2013/08/if-i-keep-on-like-this-ill-break.html (Sorry if the link doesn't work! Never tried it before. I even followed the putting-in-a-link for Dummies, but must have missed something. And I don't speak HTML!)

I had seen an endocrinologist in Quito, and he had done tests, which showed that my cortisol level was really low...not a good thing.  So he put me on dexamethasone, which I continued to take until we went to the States for the three years it took us to raise our support.

In Dallas, I found an endocrinologist. Do you know what he told me? After going over my files, he said that there were a couple of varieties of my kind of hormonal imbalance (adrenal insufficiency), and that I had the one that was more serious - I would have to take the corticoids all my life, since they were what kept me alive! He told me to get a medical bracelet, the kind with the "caduceus".  (I'm glad it actually has a name, and isn't called "that symbol thingy with a pole with wings at the top and snakes winding around it".)

I had one etched with my particular diagnosis. I thought I would have to wear it for the rest of my life. I never took it off.  Then, as I was having more severe leg pain than before, the doctor switched my medication to predisone...which did help with the pain, BUT...Oh, my goodness... I started wondering if I would be this ugly forever! Those of you who have been on it know what I mean - the red, puffy face, weight gain, etc.  I got to the point where I didn't even want to look at pictures taken of me before all this, because the contrast was so great; all it did was depress me more! I was grateful to God for the medical attention, but my "inside" didn't find it easy to accept my "outside"!  I was only in my mid-to-late 30's.  Did I have another 50 years ahead of me looking like that?                                                                                                                                                                                                                         

You have seen the recent pictures of me that I posted a couple of months back...and I don't have a red, puffy face, do I?  ( See Two Pictures; a Poem for the New Year; and a continuing story...). (Ditto about the link.) WELL...Caduceus and I broke up! Many years later, thanks to his persistence, my father managed to get me an appointment at the Mayo Clinic (not an easy thing to do), during one of our furloughs. We went to the one in Arizona.  There they did bunches of diagnostic tests over several days - and it was covered completely by our health insurance!

The verdict:  my endocrinologist had messed up the last 15 or more years of my life!  (Actually, the doctor who presented me with the final evaluation used the word "ruined".)  They didn't find any reason to continue with the prednisone.  They also found I had arthritis and a dysfunctional sacroiliac...and a few other things.  I DID have hormonal imbalances, but corticoids wasn't the way to go. So I began to wean myself off of them, and eventually the time came when I could actually bear looking at myself in the mirror again!
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As you can see, we've "been through the wringer" with our various "infirmities", and we continue to battle health issues as we grow older.  ("Older", NOT "old" - we decided a while ago that we weren't going to be "old" for another 25 years or so!)


We really like what St. Paul said:  "Therefore we do not lose heart.  Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day." (2 Cor. 4:16)  Maybe it should say, "Do not lose heart!", because as humans, we sometimes do, but with all the blessings that God gives and IS, it needn't remain that way.  SO CHEER UP!
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So many people are "mis-medicated" spiritually.  They are mis-directed or try on their own to find the solution to their spiritual infirmities...always searching, but never finding the cure. In their struggles, they may have looked everywhere...except the one place that has it all. They don't know where to look, or if they do, don't want to face it.  God is the Great Diagnostician, knows exactly what's wrong with each of us, and has given us, his imperfect creatures, a Book that has the ONLY cure.  All the remedies needed for it are at our disposal!  With them we can also say , "yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day".  Can YOU say that?

Have a wonderful week, and meet me here next time!