Others begin to notice - it isn't just my imagination!

The thing with Cushing's Disease is that it definitely doesn't hide itself. I was beginning to look like the M&M's guy or Tweedle Dee and people had of course noticed. My friend’s sister used to cut my hair when I’d go home to visit and she noticed it was thinner and asked if I’d looked into polycystic ovarian cyst disorder. She had noticed my weight gain and acne too and the women in her family suffered from it so it seemed fitting. I brought it up to my doctor but again nothing was found out.

In the fall of 2010 my mom called me crying begging me to go back to the doctor and I finally gave in. Her friend (a nurse at the local clinic) had come by the house when I was home visiting in the summer to drop something off and she hadn’t seen me since I’d been home at Christmas. The next day she told my mom she thought I had Cushing’s Disease – and she’d only seen me for a brief second. My mom googled it and convinced herself that I had it and told me to look into it. She herself has Addison’s Disease – also suggested to her by someone she works with and turns out they were right! Anyway, I googled it and sure enough all the symptoms seemed to fit. I printed them all off and took them with me to my appointment. My regular doctor was on maternity leave and I had a locum and she was so intrigued. She listened carefully and looked things up and immediately sent me for testing. My tests all came back with high readings and it seemed pretty clear that something was up. When I went back to the doctor the locum was away and another locum saw me. He was just as helpful and sent me for the next set of tests and sent a referral to an endocrinologist. It was funny. One of the other doctors I’d seen last year was there when he was sending the referral and he asked her advice about Cushing’s and told her my mom had diagnosed me. She took one look at me and said oh yes, definitely Cushing’s, look at the moon face. Rude. Not surprisingly this was the doctor who had told me to go to the gym more because three times a week plus everyday walks was not enough.