Today is Cushing’s Awareness Day.
Here are two pictures of me. The first taken just now, wet hair and all (and I’m a little puffy from having to stress dose steroids this week). The other one was taken when I was testing, but before diagnosis and treatment.
My Cushing’s disease may be in remission, however the years I spent sick cost me a lot. The damage Cushing’s did to both my body and my life create ongoing challenges. It took two surgeries to get here, and I know the type of tumor I had could grow back at any time. Getting rid of it left me with a pituitary gland (the one that makes pretty much all your hormones) that stopped functioning. I have ever lasting effects.
But I’ve got this. A diet of pills keep me mostly functional and ALIVE. And I’ve got Robert Fleischman, who has been by my side through the before and the after and never waivered in giving me both love and support.
I don’t know how I could have made it this far without Mary Kelly O’Connor and her cushings-help.com website. Through her and it I found friends and support through years of testing, plus the insomnia, anxiety and mood swings and all the other TMI stuff caused by being flooded with cortisol making my body believe I was in constant danger.
