Billie Worsey had spent many years of her life in agonizing pain, and had encountered her fair share of dismissive doctors.
In fact, Billie was so sick, that she didn’t ever remember feeling 100% well.
For years, she suffered from extreme digestion issues and struggled to gain any weight. Instead, she constantly lost weight, no matter what she did, and was always so exhausted that by 7pm she was crashed out in bed, with “no energy to even grab a glass of water.”
Billie had spent a good deal of time in the doctor’s office, as well as the ER, but despite her becoming delirious from low sodium levels, she was always sent straight back home again. Meanwhile, her condition was becoming worse and worse.
“My weight got so low, strangers would ask if I had an eating disorder, and I was so weak I wasn’t able to even walk upstairs without collapsing at the top,” Billie told Love What Matters.
Doctors were baffled as to what was causing Billie to feel so sick, and eventually she was diagnosed with a heart condition called Postural Tachycardia syndrome. But still, she began to get more and more sick.
By June of 2020, Billie was so unwell that she could no longer walk up the stairs without feeling as if she was going to pass out. She had two young children that she had no energy for, and often cried about how terrible she felt and how nothing was making her better.
All of this continued until July, when doctors finally decided to take Billie seriously.
After Billie had begged for another blood test, doctors found something shocking.
“I got a call from the doctor telling me to drop everything and to get to the hospital,” Billie recalled. “The blood tests showed my sodium levels were dangerously low. In fact, they couldn’t believe I was still able to stand.”
“They explained I could have gone into a fit at any moment, a thought that still makes my blood run cold, thinking about myself alone with my two babies while my husband was at work.”
Thankfully, Billie safely made it to the hospital, where she was hooked up to a sodium drip. She then had another blood test to check her cortisol levels.
A normal cortisol level is around 300 to 400, and a cortisol level of 100 would warrant medical intervention. Billie’s was two.
“I was going into failure. I was essentially dying,” Billie said. “My consultant told me if I had left things any longer, I wouldn’t have survived.”
Doctors began injecting cortisol into Billie’s body every couple of hours, and by the morning, she was feeling better than she had in years.
“I got up to walk to the toilet. I suddenly realized I wasn’t dizzy, my heart wasn’t pounding, I didn’t feel sick. In fact, I felt really well!” Billie recalled.
After more tests, Billie finally got the diagnosis that she had been waiting years for. She had Addison’s disease, a rare autoimmune condition that means the body’s immune system attacks itself, stopping your adrenals from producing cortisol.
It turned out that her heart condition diagnosis had been wrong. As soon as Billie began taking the steroids, all of her symptoms melted away.
Despite now having to take steroids for the rest of her life, Billie felt an enormous sense of relief. She was finally on the road to recovery.
“When I got home from the hospital, the first thing I did was walk up the stairs to have a shower,” Billie said. “I walked up them with no trouble, then I walked down them, then I ran up them, and sobbed. I couldn’t believe it.”
Billie is so thankful that her condition can now be treated, and she has a message for all of us out there who take our good health for granted:
“Health is our biggest wealth, but it’s something that’s taken for granted so much. I remember reading the quote, ‘A healthy person can have a million goals, an unwell person only has one.’ It’s so true. Suddenly, I was able to have so many hopes and dreams that I could never have before.”
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