Changes in Medication

[lussgig]

My 87 yr old mother developed Addisons disease after recieving injuctions of steriods to contend with pain from Spinal Stenosis about 2 yrs. ago. It took a while before her Dr. figured out what she had. She was hospitalized in the beginning before her medications were stabilized. She was quite fragile for a while but takes Cortef and Florinef every day. She had major back surgery last Feb. and had to recieve the intravenous of Cortisol before the surgery. She made a terrific recovery from this and felt well most of last summer. However her routine blood tests resulted in constant "tweeking" the dosage particularly the Florinef. Now, she is having other symptoms and after a Cat Scan, and MRI they have ruled out that it is additional back problems or problems with her pelvic organs. Everything appears normal. She is in pain on her left abdominal side radiating into the back. Some days she can barely walk and others she can manage the pain and has better days. I am starting to think it has to do with the Medication. She had been increased from 1 - 1 1/2 Florinef 3 days a week and 1/2 the remainder. It seems to me that she started this other pain around the time of this increase. She has not been to see an endocrinologist or had any of the advanced tests to see if the Adrenal is functioning at all. Our PC has been very involved with all of it but she is not a specialist. I would greatly appreciated any feedback if anyone has experieced anything like this. She is getting very depressed and I am the only one she has to help her.
Thank you

[lussgig]

She has not had a dexascan for her bones.
She takes 10mg. of Cortef twice a day and Florinef 5mg. (now) once a day. They had increased her to 15mg three days a week and only 5mg. on remaining days
She has never taken salt tablets but does crave things salty. Her blood pressure is low to normal

She had open heart about 20 yrs. ago and is on Lipitor, Diltiazem, and a diuretic.
When this Adrenal stuff hit her she lost her appetite and quite a bit of weight, lost her hair all over her body, her skin became so thin she was gauging herself and bruising all over. She wanted to die and she's a fiesty independent woman. It was horrible. She had to have the back surgery last year because of Spinal Stenosis and came through that with flying colors. Now this and she is in incredible pain but it is worse some days than others. As I said before this pain started after they began having trouble stablizing her blood with the Florinef and increased it. She has just decreased it back to 5mg. per day.
I appreciated any thoughts or help anyone may have.

[rumpled]

Has she had a dexascan to see how her bones are?

How much cortef does she take? Does she take salt tablets too? Is her blood pressure high or low?

I have no adrenals...I am very familar with all this... I used to be in horrible pain. I now go to acupuncture for it and that helped a lot. I know it sounds crazy but that is what got me moving again.

I take 15-5mg of cortef (7am, 2pm) and 1mg florinef, 2g salt.

If she is on meds, they cannot test her adrenals.