JessP

Yay!! That's a step in the right direction!

I can very much relate to this issue. Ultimately, I diagnosed myself, but I felt like I should have figured it out sooner. I had been a nurse for a little while before it dawned on me.

At this point I'm in the 4th stage of loss, depression. I'm so sad that I'm 27, not working, not in school, and only surviving before of a disability check. If I don't start to feel better soon I don't know what I can do. For right now, my dogs are my reasons to live and the reason I get out of bed every day. This is never what I thought I'd grow up to be when I was little.

sns72, I get similar comments often, as well. I was once told that it was my extreme dieting that caused my Cushing's, that eating too few calories for two long is what caused my metabolism to crash. That makes no sense whatsoever. Anorexics aren't generally overweight. And beyond that issue, my Cushing's came before my crazy diets. I didn't know why I had gained so much weight and normal measures to lose it weren't working.

Ah, you guys are right. Sorry!

I'm convinced that Cushing's will kill me. My immune system is so bad that when I get a cold I'll have it a minimum of 10 days. The flu or anything more serious I'll have for 3 weeks. I'm sure that one of these days I'll get sick and my body just won't be able to fight it. I'd hate to die of pneumonia in my 20s or 30s. ...or I'd get injured, get an infection, and turn septic. It takes me weeks to heal from minor injuries like scratches.

So, given that, I'm willing to take my chances with a BLA. Most sources say that it's fairly safe. That, and my qualify of life sucks. I'm managing because I have to. I'm the only source of income for my family so I have to work. I'm taking 10 credits this semester and still working full-time because I just don't have a choice, but it's an awful experience. There's a lot I'm willing to risk to get anything better than this.

You read that right. I suspect that their age also had something to do with it. (The median was 62 y/o for those with Cushing's disease and 52 y/o for those with ectopic Cushing's syndrome, which means some patients had to be older than those. Of course some were younger, too.) Perhaps they didn't tolerate surgery well or were inactive post-op and got pneumonia or some other problem. It doesn't help that they were likely overweight going into surgery given that they had Cushing's.