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Is It In My Adrenal Gland or In My Head?
The results of the CT scan come back, still waiting on urinalysis, and I decide the whole thing is in my head. Wishful thinking is what it is all about.
Date: 1/13/2010 9:31:53 AM ( 15 y ) ... viewed 1229 times (This is a continuing saga and I’m not good at writing recaps. Start here at your peril)
It’s weird but I was actually happy about having an adrenal gland tumor. People like certainty, even an unpleasant certainty, better than uncertainty and I am no exception. It gave me something to label my condition. And exploring the internet for symptoms, treatments and outputs gave me something to do. It made me feel like I had some control over what happened to me, even though that control was only in the smallest way.
Dr. S2 had wanted me to have the CT scan the next day but instead I did the 24-hour urine with the CT scan on Friday. I couldn’t do the urine on Friday because the lab wasn’t open Saturday. This way I got both tests done before the weekend. It’s that kind of powerful decision that made me feel better about my situation.
My BP stayed reasonably low, with no spikes, until Saturday night when it zipped up to an unpleasant 170/105. Damn. Why did that happen? Did it mean I don’t have an adrenal tumor? I thought Dr. S2 said that wouldn’t happen. His exact words were, “Let’s get you back on the lisinopril so you won’t have a stroke.” That was reassuring when the lisinopril worked. Not so reassuring now.
Sunday night I got an email from Dr. S2. I really do like the way he sends all his lab results to you in emails. Why don’t all doctors do that? The bright spots on my liver looked like benign hemangeomas but would need to be rechecked in six months. The scan was negative for adrenal tumors.
This could mean a couple of things. One: I might not have an adrenal tumor at all. Two: the tumor might be too small to image. Adrenal tumors are typically very small and Dr. S2 had said this was a possibility. Three (I guess that’s more than a couple): 10% of adrenal tumors are not in the adrenal glands themselves but hidden somewhere else in your body. I am not sure whether this means they are malignant and have metastasized. The articles I read did not use that word so I don’t think that is the case. But those tumors are much harder to find since they are small and you don’t know where to look.
I was back in the area of uncertainty again. What if it’s not an adrenal tumor? What else could it be? I searched the web for “hypertension episodic” and came up with an interesting article. It seems that some percentage of cases of episodic hypertension are psychosomatic.
Psychosomatic. Humm. I read on, at first angry at the possibility that I would be viewed as a hypochondriac. The two cases I read about both had recovered memories of terrible things that occurred in their childhood. When they remembered those things, their hypertension problems disappeared.
I have a couple of problems with that. Firstly, I don’t believe in recovered memories. They have largely been debunked by the scientific community and I specifically have dealt with my sister having a “recovered memory” of something that I had told her the previous week. Secondly, I have very unpleasant memories of my childhood as it is. I was a victim of physical, sexua| and emotional abuse. My stepfather went to prison and I testified against him. Could I really have a repressed memory that was worse than the stuff I do remember? Seems unlikely.
On the other hand, mental illness runs in my family. I always thought I had escaped it, beaten the odds. But maybe not completely?
I read on. Psychosomatic episodic hypertension manifests as severe anxiety attacks. I’d never had an anxiety attack. What did that feel like? Did it feel like the uncomfortable yet indescribable sensations I had when my BP spiked. I had been paying a lot of attention to what that felt like in case another doctor asked me. The one thing I could definitively say is that I had rushes, sensations of a wave of something that started in my abdomen, went down to my feet and then coursed through my head. When this happened, my shaking would briefly stop and the whole world would seem quiet and calm. The shaking would return and the calm feeling start to disappear in about 30 seconds and be gone within a couple of minutes. Was that an anxiety attack?
I decided to go with that diagnosis, at least until the results of the urine test come back. Again, it puts me in control of my situation. If it is psychosomatic, then all I have to do is confront it and my BP spikes should go away. I can’t believe I have a repressed memory but maybe there is something in my current life that is stressing me out.
That didn’t take much thinking. My husband and my daughter C do not get along. Even though he has been her stepfather since she was three years old, R does not like C and he has never really been nice to her. Sure, she was trouble growing up, but that is no excuse. And C doesn’t like R either, but I can hardly blame her because of how R treats her. I blame R because he was always supposed to be the adult and take the higher ground but he never has.
Further, I’m unsure how R feels about me these days. For example, as I write this he has been gone for the past week on a vacation to Las Vegas. He left right after I started the lisinopril, when we thought I wasn’t going to have any more spikes, but he didn’t come back when I did. In fact, he extended his vacation by another day.
Yet, I’ve been through a lot more stressful times than this. Nevertheless, I am going to say that’s what it is and that it because in order to cure a psychosomatic illness you have to really believe in it. It is the one case where wishful thinking actually works. And I haven’t had an episode in the last three days so maybe it’s working.
Annoyingly, if this works, it means Dr. W was right; taking my BP more often may actually have made my BP higher.
(This catches my story up to current time, 2010/01/13)
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