Last spring, my mom woke up at 3 a.m., convinced she was dying. She was only 45, but her body was shutting down. Her legs had become leaden, and she couldn’t stand up. She slid off the bed, woke my father, and told him they had to get to the hospital. He carried her to the car in his arms while she vomited the whole way.
What my mom didn’t yet know was that she was having an adrenal crisis, a life-threatening medical episode marked by blood-pressure collapse, brain swelling, and circulatory shock. A doctor injected her with a large dose of the steroid hydrocortisone, saving her life. A few weeks later, she was diagnosed with Addison’s, a rare hormonal disease that develops when a person’s immune system attacks and destroys its own adrenal glands.
For two years, my mom had been visiting doctors to ask about her strange symptoms. She’d been hospitalized three times and saw 12 specialists. They’d offered several misdiagnoses. But it took a brush with death that night in a Florida emergency room to finally get the name of the disease she was suffering with. If only that was all it took to get the treatment, too.
Ross Douthat. Abigail Shrier. Douglas Murray. Niall Ferguson. Coleman Hughes. Caitlin Flanagan. Nellie Bowles. Arthur Brooks. Kat Rosenfield. Tyler Cowen. The voices you trust, all in one place. For a limited time only, subscribe for 20% off The Free Press.
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