✍️ Day 20: 40 Days of Thankfulness

I hope I’m not jinxing myself but today I am thankful that I haven’t had any migraines for a while.

 

It’s not “just” not having migraines, but the fact that, should I get one, there’s nothing I can do about them anymore.

 

I used to get migraines quite often, a hormone thing probably. I spent lots of hours in a completely dark room, blocking out sound, trying to keep my head from pounding.

 

There was a long period of time that I had a migraine 6 days out of the week for several weeks. By accident, a friend asked me on a Monday if I had one that day and that started me thinking – why do I have them every day except Mondays? I figured out that it wasn’t a migraine at all but an allergy headache – I was allergic to the bath oil I was using Monday-Saturday. I gave that to my Mom and those headaches went away.

 

I still often get allergy headaches. Since my Cushing’s transsphenoidal pituitary surgery, I can’t smell things very well and I often don’t know if there’s a scent that is going to trigger an allergic reaction. In church and elsewhere, my Mom will be my “Royal Sniffer” and if someone is wearing perfume or something scented, she’ll let me know and we’ll move to a new location.

 

There’s a double whammy here – since my kidney cancer surgery, my doctor won’t let me take NSAIDs, aspirin, Tylenol, any of the meds that might help a headache go away. If I absolutely MUST take something, it has to be a small amount of Tylenol only. My only hope would be that coffee from Day Thirteen. And that’s definitely not usually enough to get rid of one of these monsters.

 

So, I am very thankful that, for the moment, I am headache/migraine free!

 

Adapted from

✍️ Day 22: 40 Days of Thankfulness

 

Today is the 31st anniversary of my pituitary surgery at NIH.

As one can imagine, it hasn’t been all happiness and light.  Most of my journey has been documented here and on the message boards – and elsewhere around the web.

My Cushing’s has been in remission for most of these 31 years.  Due to scarring from my pituitary surgery, I developed adrenal insufficiency.

I took growth hormone for a while.

When I got kidney cancer, I had to stop the GH, even though no doctor would admit to any connection between the two.

Last year I went back on it (Omnitrope this time) in late June.  Hooray!  I still don’t know if it’s going to work but I have high hopes.  I am posting some of how that’s going here.

During nephrectomy, doctors removed my left kidney, my adrenal gland, and some lymph nodes.  Thankfully, the cancer was contained – but my adrenal insufficiency is even more severe than it was.

In the last couple years, I’ve developed ongoing knee issues.  Because of my cortisol use to keep the AI at bay, my endocrinologist doesn’t want me to get a cortisone injection in my knee.  September 12, 2018 I did get that knee injection (Kenalog)  and it’s been one of the best things I ever did.  I’m not looking forward to telling my endo!

I also developed an allergy to blackberries in October and had to take Prednisone – and I’ll have to tell my endo that, too!

My mom has moved in with us, bring some challenges…

But, this is a post about Giving Thanks.  The series will be continued on this blog unless I give thanks about something else Cushing’s related 🙂

I am so thankful that in 1987 the NIH existed and that my endo knew enough to send me there.

I am thankful for Dr. Ed Oldfield, my pituitary neurosurgeon at NIH.  Unfortunately, Dr. Oldfield died in the last year.

I’m thankful for Dr. Harvey Cushing and all the work he did.  Otherwise, I might be the fat lady in Ringling Brothers now.

To be continued in the following days here at http://www.maryo.co/