Turns out I wasn’t “just tired” …(My Cortisol Story)

I sat in the doctor’s office with desperation in my eyes as I pleaded for her to tell me what the heck was wrong with me.

For several weeks prior, I just did not feel like myself. Before my visit, I asked her to put in a blood work order to test for everything she could possibly think of. Something was just not right. I felt off. I felt awful, actually. And I was determined to get to the bottom of why I was feeling this way.

For weeks I had been so tired that I was taking naps every single day, which is absolutely not like me. As glorious as a nap sounds, it’s just not in the realm of possibilities with my day-to-day schedule. But I couldn’t think straight. Getting out of bed took every ounce of energy I could possibly muster up, and by the time I got everybody ready and out the door, I was just absolutely exhausted. I’d walk up the stairs to my apartment with what felt like bricks in my legs. I’d push through a one-hour workout everyday but when I was done, I was DONE. I had zero energy for cleaning the house, playing with the kids, writing, or doing anything else. The exhaustion was overwhelming.

My mood was off. I was emotional, irritable, down, and much more tearful than normal. My brain felt foggy; I couldn’t really focus during conversations and definitely could not think clearly enough to sit down and write (which serves as a real problem when you’re an author and blogger) or do anything that required undivided attention. I’d sit down, open my computer, and absolutely could. not. do it.

Then, despite eating healthy and exercising daily, I packed on 8 pounds in a month. What in the literal heck.

It just had to be my thyroid, right? Wrong.

My doctor looked me straight in the eyes and said, “Jennifer I know you wanted me to test everything, and I literally put in the order for every test I could possibly think of for you. And [pause] literally all your blood work looks absolutely incredible…”

(sigh)

(pause)

I knew it. I knew she was going to tell me that everything was perfectly fine and there was no solution. Now, I’ve been through waves where I didn’t feel great before, but usually it ended up being something simple like needing more water or paying closer attention to what foods I’m eating. But this was different. I felt awful. For weeks. Very unlike myself, and no matter what I did, I couldn’t shake it!

We chatted for a while, and finally she looked at me and said something I absolutely did not expect.

She said, “Jennifer… you’ve had some trauma in your growing-up years, right?”

I have no (and I mean NO) idea how she knows that. I’ve only ever seen her three times. But she was right. Growing up very overweight and eventually tipping the scales at 336 pounds, was awful. I was bullied relentlessly, and it really did affect me.

Wondering what she was leading to and how she knew to even ask that question, I said “yes…”

She said, “Ya know… I wonder if you’re still hanging on to some of that hard stuff that you went through. You’re so strong. You’ve lost 160 pounds. You grabbed onto that weight-loss journey like a bulldog and shoved all the horrible things from your past to the side because you were determined to overcome in this area of your life. But I wonder if where you are now in your journey is the point of digging up some of that stuff and processing through it a little more.”

And that’s when I looked like a dear in headlights. This was my primary physician. Not a counselor or psychologist. I never in a million years would have expected her to say that to me. And with the million-and-one ways I self-diagnosed before I showed up at that appointment, that right there was NOT an ailment I had considered.

But as I went about my day later on, and thought about what she said, I thought… maybe she’s right!

Painful Past Events

I’ve been writing a book for the last year, and while the whole book isn’t about stories from my past, there are several that made the cut. Thinking back to some of the incredibly hurtful words from peers, putting myself back in those classrooms, sitting in those chairs, remembering their laughter toward me, feeling hopeless and desperate… those memories were hard to re-digest after years of not thinking about them at all. Maybe I did need to dig up some of these old experiences and begin to process them a little better so I could make sure I was all healed up.

Could that really be the problem though? Could something like that actually cause me to feel this physically horrible?

Why YES… Actually.

A few days later the nurse called back with some news that brought everything full circle. She left a voice message saying “Hi Jennifer, I just wanted to give you a call to let you know that we did get one last test result and it turns out that your cortisol level is high…”

What the heck is that? I had no idea what that meant, so I started researching. Google became my best friend. As it turns out, cortisol is an important hormone that all of us have, but too much of it can cause lots of problems. Cortisol is known as the stress hormone because of how it operates in our bodies.