What, me worry?

[pwc51]

A real car!!!

[Debbie C]

Good to hear from you vdub, glad to hear you are doing so well with your knee in such a short period of time. You need to take extra steroids with you when you get anything done so when you have these adrenal crisis you can just pop some steroids and not wait for the dr.Hope you start to feeling better so you can go belly up to the poker table and win US some bucks !!! Safe travels .

[vdub]

You need to take extra steroids

You're right, Deb! I have always traveled with solucortef and needles, but I've never viewed it as something I needed "at arm's length". My new rheumy has changed that thinking, though. He said my adrenal crisis' will probably become more frequent and that they can be triggered by any form of trauma; either mental or physical. So, I have now made kits with injectable steroids and I have a kit for each car and for the suitcase that I normally take when traveling.

When I had my first adrenal crisis, my wife was the one who noticed the symptoms and went back to our state room to get the solucortef and bring it to the ship's doctor. After going through two episodes now, I think I'll be able recognize the onset of a crisis and give myself the shots.

I have always wondered how much of a sense of humor cops would have if I was ever stopped and they found hydrocodone, hgh, steroids, needles, etc in my car. The drugs get so split up among different containers that having a script on every container would be quite impossible. I can only hope the cops would put a little thought into their actions and recognize that I don't exactly fit the profile for a drug user, abuser, or pusher. Unfortunately, there's been a lot of instances where common sense has been totally abandoned.

[drz]

Is there any need to worry about temperature for storage for these drugs. I think all you need for a script is one letter listing them all and to keep it on you with some extra back up copies for wife, cars, on your cell phone if possible as a document etc.

I have wondered what would happen if cops stopped me and asked me to walk a straight line since I can't do that under best of circumstances. But my driver's license says diabetic so figure they might cut me some slack and take me to a hospital if I looked too impaired.

So far my needles have not warranted any extra attention from security when traveling after they learn I have diabetes.

You're right, Deb! I have always traveled with solucortef and needles, but I've never viewed it as something I needed "at arm's length". My new rheumy has changed that thinking, though. He said my adrenal crisis' will probably become more frequent and that they can be triggered by any form of trauma; either mental or physical. So, I have now made kits with injectable steroids and I have a kit for each car and for the suitcase that I normally take when traveling.

When I had my first adrenal crisis, my wife was the one who noticed the symptoms and went back to our state room to get the solucortef and bring it to the ship's doctor. After going through two episodes now, I think I'll be able recognize the onset of a crisis and give myself the shots.

I have always wondered how much of a sense of humor cops would have if I was ever stopped and they found hydrocodone, hgh, steroids, needles, etc in my car. The drugs get so split up among different containers that having a script on every container would be quite impossible. I can only hope the cops would put a little thought into their actions and recognize that I don't exactly fit the profile for a drug user, abuser, or pusher. Unfortunately, there's been a lot of instances where common sense has been totally abandoned.

[vdub]

A real car!!!

Yes, a real car! I love that car.... Would you believe I bought it in 1971 and I've had it all these years? About 2 months after buying it, I got my draft notice, so I put the car in storage and enlisted. I never thought I'd be in the military for a career. The car was in storage from Jan1972 to Mar2013, when I finally retired from everything. I've spent the last couple years replacing all the rubber bits and pieces that deteriorated.

[pwc51]

Wow - fancy being able to keep your hands off it all that time! No wonder it looks so good. What a great project to keep your mind off this awful condition.

[vdub]

It has been a lot of fun and it did keep my mind off the wegs problems. Unfortunately, wegs has caused the progress on the project to be extremely slow and, at times, difficult. Just having enough energy to tackle simple projects has been hard.

I didn't really have a place to work on it, so I had a small cabin built and put double doors in the back. I had the cabin hauled to the empty lot next to my house and it became my shop. It has worked out real well.

I have been having so much fun working on the A and I saw a poor little '67 MGB GT rotting away on a street corner. I tracked down the owner to see if I could buy it and he gave it to me for next to nothing. So now I have a follow-on project..... My wife is soooo excited! That's sarcasm, son, sarcasm....

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[Debbie C]

vdub,what brings on your adrenal crisis and why are you going to have them more often ? I just thought it was from lowering the preds to soon.....is it from your thyroid issue ? Anyway ...sorry to hear this.

Nice new home for you car(s) ! Is the green 1 the one you just got ? Take care
Ha Ha , I can see you sitting in jail from steroid use !!!

[vdub]

I just thought it was from lowering the preds to soon....

For most people, that is the case. Your adrenal gland controls the amount of cortisol your body needs. When you are given steroids (cortisol), your adrenal gland thinks you have as much cortisol as you need, so it quits making cortisol. When you come off the steroids, you do a taper so that your adrenal gland has time to "wake up" and start producing cortisol again.

Now switch to the pituitary gland.... The pit is called the "master gland" because it controls many of the other glands in your body. One of the glands it controls is the adrenal gland, the one that secrets cortisol, aka steroids. Since I don't have a pituitary gland, my adrenal gland is effectively dead and non-functioning. I am on replacement steroids all the time. I take hydrocortisone as the replacement steroid. Hydrocortisone and pred are essentially the same thing, but it different strengths. (strength table)

The pred I take is above and beyond the replacement "keep alive" steroid. The pred is used as a treatment steroid for the wegs. In theory, I should never have to taper off pred as most other people have to taper. The reason is because I'm on external replacement steroids all the time and I don't have a "wake up" issue with my adrenal gland.

One of the things that your normal adrenal gland does for you is provide bursts of cortisol whenever you are under stress; either mental or physical. Without the burst of cortisol, you would go into an adrenal crisis. The burst can be quite large -- maybe as much as 200mg or more and for a sustained amount of time.

So anyway, I don't have a pituitary to control the adrenal to give me the burst of cortisol I need in a trauma situation and the result is an adrenal crisis. Why will they become more frequent? I didn't ask the doctor that question, but if I had to guess, I'd say age.

You mention going to jail... I worry about that at times and have to be careful. I carry 3 drugs with me that are controlled substances; hydrocodone, tramadol, and human growth hormone. The hGH has to be injected, so it has needles, too. It is the drug that would be least understood by a cop and probably the one most likely to send me to jail for a short visit. Colorado is really tough on hGh possession -- I'm guessing because our Olympic training camp is in CO Springs, but, otherwise, I don't know why.

[annekat]

Excellent summary of how pred and the adrenal glands work, vdub. I'm wondering, though, how do our shut-down adrenals deal with stress situations when they'd normally be able to produce a large "burst" of cortisone, perhaps up to 200mg, in these cases? It seems we'd be pretty much out of luck, unless the amount of pred we are taking is enough to handle these situations.