And It's About Time There Was Some Support For Cushing's!
I'm a 31 year old female with 2 children.
Over a year ago I was getting frustrated with my weight and my face and ears would get real red. I was excersizing and contined to gain weight, not lose. I was gaining weight in my face, under my chin and around my waist and my clavicle bones were dissapearing. I normally was 120 lb and by March 2005 I was 145 lb.
My blood pressure took a pretty good jump from 120's/ 80's to 140's/ 90's. My highest reading was 180/ 108. My husband is a nurse and knew this was more than weight gain and high blood pressure (which does run in my family). So he started investigating and found Cushing's.
We went to my primary care dr who ran some lab work and came back with UFC 24hr of 412ug. Was referred to an endo who ordered more lab work and my 1mg overnight dexamethasone test was 6.0ug.
So as of March 2005 I knew I had Cushing's syndrome.
My endo referred me to another endo and radiologist to do an IPSS. My results were: before CRH- right: 49, left: 35, peripheral: 20. 2 minutes after CRH: right: 15,700, left: 500 and peripheral: 119. So I now know it's probably a tumor on my right side and I have Cushing's disease (after a few more salivary cortisol tests). So that explains the moon face, red face, buffalo hump, stretch marks, weight gain in my waist area, bruising easily (I never bruised before), high blood pressure, fatigue, facial hair growth, not as "sharp" as I used to be, headaches, lower backaches, and cuts that were taking longer than normal to heal.
I will be going to Dr Ludlam and Delashaw in Oregon sometime in July for the transsphenoidal surgery- just decided that the end of June after my IPSS was completed. Lots of investigating different Dr's and weighting them all out. Would like this to be my first and hopefully last surgery!
Read Tammie's newspaper article here.
