I am hypopituitary brought on by viral encephalitis(herpes zoster) 19 years ago. After spending over 70,000 dollards on several speclists I live in constant pain. When I just could not go on, I went to ERs and waited 8 hours to be treated. During which I went to the mens room and banged my head on the concrete wall to break the pain cycle for a nano second. To say I have build up a tolerance to any medication after 19 years is an understatement. The current war on opioids has not helped. I finally educated myself and found a lot of what I had been told was not true. My explanation was the diagnosis cannot be made in 15 minutes, which is all I have ever been given. The HPA is a sensitive axis and throwing down few prednisone and other replacement hormones will eventually wreck the vascular system. Can we say stroke and heart attact?