5. A process of elimination, although I didn’t know it at the time!

At the start of 2003 I was still not working and now I was also starting to feel fatigued for no obvious reason and thought my brain was not working as well as it had done in the past, i.e. concentration etc. During the first half of 2003 I saw two Ear, Nose and Throat consultants, and had a CT scan, but neither consultant could find the problem causing my stuffed up sinus and Tinnitus. Just in case it was some form of sinus infection I took a course of antibiotics, but this did not help clear my stuffy head.

I tried inhaling vapour and nasal douching i.e. spraying a special salt water solution up my nose to keep clearing it out, all with no dramatic improvement.

One night my partner made a comment that my fatigue symptoms etc sounded a bit like the menopause in women that she had read about, which I initially thought was a silly suggestion. However, when I did a bit of research on the internet I found to my surprise there was something called Andropause, which some thought occurred in men as a result of a lowering of their testosterone levels over time.

So I had my doctor do some more blood tests and my testosterone level was a bit low. However, my doctor was not sure if it was low enough to be a problem. My doctor therefore referred me to an Endocrinologist consultant who did his own tests, including an MRI scan of my head and indicated that my testosterone was at the lower end of what they considered to be the normal range. However, he decided that he would try me on a course of Testosterone Replacement Therapy (TRT) to see if that improved my symptoms.

I tried the TRT treatment for nearly a year, which was one injection per month. The TRT treatment lasted until about mid 2004. While there might have been a slight improvement as a result of this treatment, the consultant decided that there had not been a significant improvement in my symptoms and therefore this was not the cause of my problem, as I was still feeling fatigued.

I should perhaps explain that by this time my fatigue symptoms would be such that I would sleep for eight or more hours at night, get up and by the time I had finished my breakfast I would be feeling so tired I would have to go back to bed for another three or four hours sleep. I would then get up still feeling un-refreshed despite all of this sleep.

Go to Part6. I was now willing to try almost anything!