Our lives were ON HOLD

Lisa Haines, 33, wanted to marry her true love, but she had to wait for an important call first

- IONA KINLOCH, SARA LAIN

Sitting vulnerable and weak, in a hospital gown, my heart raced as I watched the doctor approach with a piece of paper. I threw an anxious glance at my sister, Joanne, then 30, who’d insisted on bringing me to hospital the night before because I could hardly drag myself out of bed.

‘You have Addison’s disease,’ the doctor said, explaining that the rare autoimmune condition meant my adrenal glands weren’t producing enough cortisol or aldosterone – hormones that regulate your blood pressure, sugar levels and your body’s reaction to stress. It was why my weight had plummeted from 10st to 6st in just six months, and why I was constantly exhausted.

I sobbed in Joanne’s arms as I took in the news. It seemed unspeakably unfair: I was just 24 and it was the second life-threatening, life-long condition I’d been diagnosed with.

I was 10 when I found out that I had type 1 diabetes. It was a lot for a young girl to deal with, and I didn’t take it seriously, going out drinking with friends as a teen and not taking my medication properly. Yet, recently, I’d carefully been following doctor’s orders – sticking to a strict diet, testing my blood-sugars four times a day, and injecting insulin twice daily.

But then, in 2011, I’d started feeling fatigued and lost weight frighteningly quickly. Realising it must be more than my diabetes playing up, I let Joanne take me to hospital in Milton Keynes, where I was told I’d have to take steroids every day for life. I’d known having diabetes would leave me more vulnerable to other auto-immune diseases such as Addison’s but it didn’t make hearing the news any easier.

Even more bad news