I went through excruciating effort to get endocrine testing with a BIG specialist associated with a respected medical college. I asked to be referred based on my symptoms of low cortisol which ticked 99% of the boxes for Addison's Disease. Which can kill you.

In addition, I tracked my temperature every day at the same time, and it was all over the map. I had prepared a summary of how this had all started with menopause. If I weren't so sick I would have done a Power Point presentation!

Arrogant #$(*&^% ignored ALL of it. Within five minutes he was lining up the standard middle-aged woman trifecta:

• Problem with sleep? Ambien will make you sleep. And have sex with strangers.
• Problem with feeling depressed because I'm sick and can't get any help? Prozac. Because it's all about shutting up the patient, not actually healing them.
• I'm alive after the age of forty? Lipitor. Because you think I have problems NOW, we can always give you new ones for a change of pace.

I tell him menopause is trying to kill me and this so-called ENDOCRINOLOGIST does not even mention getting tested or trying hormone replacement therapy. I tell him my cortisol status is like someone with Addison's and he brusquely informs me if I had Addison's, I'd be dead.

Yeah, because I had to wait 3 months for this appointment.

I had to DEMAND that my cortisol be tested. He saw this as a way of throwing me out of his office, so he did. Turned out he did the test all wrong, then interpreted it all wrong, too!

But what I managed to get from it was actually the first step of recovery, because it led me to Dr. Jack Kruse, who really started the process. At that time, he was the ONLY one who understood the root cause of my issues with cortisol.

So this is why I am so deeply cynical about getting help with my issues. I'm not anti-medicine at all; there is no better time to fall in a combine than right now. If I had something clear and simple like a broken leg, I absolutely would avail myself of medical help. But they are ZERO help with creating and maintaining health.

We have to do that ourselves.