01/06/2026
This week it’s been international Addison’s Disease Day so I thought I would share my personal experience of living with this rare condition that destroys the adrenals.
My story with this goes back a long way, and sadly it caused some miscarriage’s before diagnosis. I used to have a lot of odd symptoms. It started with me feeling weak and constantly tired. It was a struggle to hold a hairdryer up. I would get incredibly nauseous and have constant dizzy spells especially standing up from a chair I would feel like I was going to black out. I was mad for eating crisps and adding Indian lime pickle to everything (a form of self-medicating - as salt really helped)
The weird thing was that I looked tanned (from hyper pigmentation) and as I had lost weight people kept saying how good I looked. Getting a diagnosis was hard as it’s not a common condition but it saved my life. I do have to take medication every day and carry an emergency injection and it took a while to come to terms with having to be on medication for life. For the first five years I couldn’t even get life insurance, but 22 years on I feel that I live well with it. If I get sick it is complicated, and there have been quite a few trips in the ambulance. I had 5 days in hospital with stomach flu as it’s vital that I don’t miss my medication and last year getting overtired when Charlie and I both had flu landed me in in hospital on the way to an Addison’s Crisis and that always has the potential to be fatal. As primary Addisons is so rare (maybe 500 people in NZ) doctors in emergency often don’t the treatment protocol right. But Im so grateful that there is medication that keeps me alive and that has only been possible since the 1950's
My journey as a soundhealer and Yoga & meditation teacher has been in parallel with this and plays a massive part in helping me stay stable - so grateful for that too✨
