Hi,
I'm new to the group and to being diagnosed with Cushing's. I have had symptoms for over 10 years but was being treated for high blood pressure, sleep apnea, diabetes, broken ribs twice, weight gain that I could never lose no matter how much I worked out and dieted. Doctors just said I need to work harder "it is a simple formula what you take in has to be less than what you burn up, work harder and eat less." I wanted to punch them sometimes.
Anyway I had to have emergency surgery for a ruptured colon this fall and that is when someone finally looked at all the symptoms and the stretch marks on my stomach and put it all together. Since then I have been reading everything I can about Cushings. I have had a lot of test run and the MRI showed a 5mm x 6mm x 3mm pituitary tumor on December 24th (Merry Christmas).
First is this a large tumor? I have seen post of people with much larger tumors. Does the size of the tumor affect the difficulty of the recovery? If I have had this for 10 years or longer, will that make the recovery harder and why would the tumor not be any bigger? Is the tumor still growing?
Most of what I have read from medical center web-sites like John Hopkins and NIH seem to indicate that with successful surgery, a full recovery to pre-cushings lifestyle is likely. However when I read the post here and look at the cushing warrior area I see multiple surgeries with most pituitary patients having to have BLA surgery later. What is the truth? Can I expect to be feeling all better after the surgery or is this something that I may have to have multiple surgeries and eventually have BLA too?
Thanks
Jody Williams