First sight of a cortisol crisis

A couple of weeks ago I saw, first hand what it looks like when my dad has a cortisol crisis. No blood or passing out but he suddenly, and I'm talking minutes, got very cold, blue lips and finger tips, shivering. As luck would have it we were already in the hospital for a test and so I went to get the Dr, the one that had seen him just half an hour before.

He had an infection, something that most people would simply overcome but for my dad it knocked all the cortisol out of his system. I sat by his hospital bed for hours then, telling him gently where he was and what was going on, and then telling him not so gently that we needed to get blood from him. I had to be firm. The NHS so often gets critisied but for me they continue to show how much they can do.

I was struck, as I sat there, how few staff were on but how important it was that they were there, how busy different people were on the ward we were on. They get paid, like all public servants but they don't get loads and they saved him.

My dad has been saved lots of times and I know he still isn't sure if he should be sometimes but when I get a text from him that makes me smile or I hear him bash into a wall  on his way to the toilet in my house I know he still has something to give, give to me. He is my dad and I love him.