What is Cushing's Disease?

Cushing's Disease is caused from a tumor. The most common location for the tumor is in the pituitary gland. The next most common place is the adrenal glands. After that, the next most common place is in the lungs. The tumors can be anywhere, but those are the most common sources.

The tumor secretes a hormone called ACTH. The ACTH tells the adrenal glands to put out more cortisol. This causes an over abundance of cortisol in the person's body. What is cortisol? Cortisol is the natural steroid our bodies make. We have to have cortisol to live. However, too much cortisol causes major destruction in the body.

Throughout this month, I plan to talk about how Cushing's Disease has affected my life. It spares no part of our body or mind. It's a horrible disease!


I had a pituitary tumor. It was only half of a millimeter, but it was wrecking havoc on my entire body! That tumor was removed, and I had a brief remission of 3 months. My symptoms began to reappear, and I started testing for the disease again. I did not have new tumor growth showing on my pituitary, so we took out both of my adrenal glands. That surgery is called a Bilateral Adrenalectomy, or BLA for a shortened version.

I am suppose to be "cured", but when you take out your adrenals, you trade one disease for another. I will forever have Addison's Disease. However, I still have some symptoms of Cushing's Disease, and suspect that I have a bit of rest tissue where my adrenals use to be. Finding that is like finding a needle in a haystack.

I do not regret any of my surgeries. I am better off than I was before my surgeries! I really wondered if I would live long enough to get on the operating table, I was that bad! I felt really good for the first 7 months after my BLA, and made lots of progress. Then it all stopped, and I started gaining weight again. A lot of weight! I put back on 50 lbs. within 4 months! Then it stopped, and I've lost some of that. For quite a while now, I have not felt very good. Each day is a struggle. I don't know what I will feel like from day to day. Some days I feel half way decent, but it can change within hours. Most days I'm very tired, dragging, and no energy at all. I'm pretty sure I have Dysautonomia as well. That is dysfunction of the autonomic nervous system. The problem is, there are not a lot of doctors who diagnose it. The best in the state has a year waiting list to see him and they won't put me on the list until they have all of my records. That's a huge task! I also know that I have Fibromyalgia and Chronic Fatigue.

All in all, I'm still better than I was with Cushing's! I'm just not back to being healthy. I may never be. I've had Cushing's all my life. I believe my mother had it, and we are discovering that my children have it. It looks like it's genetic for us. I don't want my blog to see down and depressed, but I want to be realistic about how Cushing's makes us feel, and all of the aspects we have to deal with when having this disease.

Anyone reading the blog, feel free to ask about certain symptoms, and I'll answer! The whole idea of this is to bring more awareness to the public about this disease!

Cushing's Awareness!

During the month of April, I plan to blog every day about Cushing's Disease. This is to bring more awareness of the disease and help those who are suffering with the host of symptoms that Cushing's brings.

Juicing fruits and vegetables...

As part of our journey to better health, we have started juicing. We are not juicing exclusively, though. Maybe at some point we will. We are still eating protein and occasionally some other foods as well. The first few days were kind of rough. I had a very bad headache from it. I still have a slight lingering headache that comes and goes. The hubby didn't feel nearly as bad as me. I suppose that is because my body is more toxic than his, which makes sense. I'm the sick one. Hopefully, I will lose more weight while jucing, but mostly, I just want to be more healthy, and use this as a way to incorporate some of the fruits and vegetables we don't normally eat.

My office/craft room

I got my office chair done! I'm pretty happy with it. I love the material! I think you can click on the pictures to enlarge them.

                                  

This is my crafting table. The following picture is the end of the same table.

I sorted all of my brads and eyelets by color in these buckets. They were a bit big for what I needed, but I was having a hard time finding the right size and at a decent price!  So, this is what I ended up with! I would eventually like to paint the brown wood shelves these buckets are sitting on. What do you think? Brown doesn't look too bad, but I thought white would look better.

Same wall, further down. I have a table on each side of the room, by each of those brown cabinets. The one is my sewing stuff and a table to do bills/office stuff on. The other is for crafts.

 I did have enough material left over to make covers for my serger and sewing machine. They are nothing fancy, but will keep the dust off of them. They are the same material as the chair.

Hello, everyone! I'm sorry I'm so terrible about keeping up on my blog! Lately I've been busy getting my office/craft room painted and organized. I'm so excited about that! That may sound trivial to some people, but when you've been so sick for so long that you couldn't even sort stuff, or even CARE about it, it's a big deal! I created a pretty space to create, dream, work, and relax! Crafts are relaxing to me. I enjoy them so much! Most everyone that knows me, knows I use to do lots of crafts and when I got really bad with my Cushing's Disease, all of that fell by the wayside! I'm VERY happy to say I am now feeling good enough to start back on crafts.

I have not done scrapbooking for YEARS! I hope to get all of my pictures into albums at some point. Right now, I have a new craft hobby. Making cards! I didn't think I'd really like making cards much, but I love it! It's so much fun! My goal there is to get various cards made ahead of time, that I can grab when I need one. It gives me something to do, and it's so fun creating. It does take some time, so I'd rather spend plenty of time, than doing a rush job because I need one right now! Those never turn out well. It takes time to be creative and decide what you want! LOL!

I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE my cricut! I think it's the best thing I've ever bought for myself! :) I've used it a lot already. If anyone is thinking of getting a cricut, I highly recomment getting a cartridge from Close To My Hart (they are the only ones that carry this particular one) called Art Philosophy! There are 700 images/combinations on that one cartridge! It's very versatile! If I could only have one cartridge, it would be that one! It's expensive, but worth the money! Plus, you get other stuff from CTMH with it, like VERY NICE coodinating stamps!

Anyway, last night, I made words for my buckets hodling my tools and such on my craft table. I made 2 wall words too. Before I cut them out, I used alcohol ink and made some REALLY pretty vinyl! I'm totally in love with ink! You can do such cool stuff with it! I'm really getting into the distressing and it really spruces up stuff. Did I mention I LOVE ink? ;)

I need to get off of here so I can do my mending and get that pile out of here! I want to reupholster my office chair today, so I better get busy. Pics to come. Here's a sneak peak of the office. It's not all done yet. I have some orginazational items coming that I've ordered. Oh, and I made the cornices on my windows! I love them! So pretty! I found the Thomas Kincade material online. I made a cover for my cricut, and I'm going to cover my office chair in it, too. I hope to have enough left over to make a cover for my sewing machine and serger.