Pyewackette

Well of course they treated us like we were hypochondriacs.  We are WIMMINZ!!!  All wimminz are hysterical nutbags.  I had a (female) friend who nearly died from prolonged internal bleeding because that's what doctors by and large thought (and still think).  The one doctor who finally treated her appropriately told her the answer had been in her blood work all along, if only anyone had bothered to actually analyze the results.

It's not a lot better for old men.  But old women (like us) still get it worse.  Oh the horror stories I could relate after I moved my dad in with me ...

The first doctor I suggested Addison's Disease to LAUGHED at me, no kidding, laughed right out loud.  Big Belly Laughs. After my first Addisonian crisis.  Despite my telling him I'd been diagnosed as borderline for it years ago.  It took a SECOND Addisonian crisis and almost another whole year before I got appropriate treatment. In the hospital, the nurse kept telling the doctor - 3 times in 5 minutes - that I had "multiple non-specific complaints", which is medicalese for "she's imagining it all".  She wasn't even going to test me for Covid, which is what I thought it was at the time, having had it already once right at the beginning of the pandemic. I had to tell the doctor that my PCP wanted me tested (which wasn't really true but WOULD have been if she had known what was going on) to get tested for Covid because whatever that nurse had told him out of my hearing had hardened the idea that I was a Big Fat Faker.  Oh and I had lost 25 lbs in less than a week by then (ultimately it was 40 in 10 days) and I got told I sure had it to lose.

!!!!

You have my complete sympathy.  At least mine can be easily treated with 2 tiny pills a day.  I have regrets about the fact that nearly my entire adult life passed me by while I wasn't getting treatment, but mostly after all this time I'm just relieved to be more or less normal - health-wise at least. Surely your health would have been better had you started receiving treatment earlier, overall?  Sure wish we could go back in time and tie some knots in a few tails ...

It's official, and medical mystery solved.  I have Addison's disease.  So an end to 30 years of declining functioning and having my issues foisted off on alleged "mental problems".  Too late to rescue any of my multiple careers - but at least I still have enough life left, and now the energy, to spend lotsa time playing in the mud!

I don't need you to remind me of my age. I have a bladder to do that for me.

--Stephen Fry