Of All The Contests To Win

Depending on the source, the rate of occurence of Cushings in humans is 5 out of million. You probably wonder why I bothered to throw in the "in humans" clause. That's because when I first started looking up Cushings I kept coming across Cushings in horses, dogs, cats etc., seems it is fairly prolific in the four legged mammal category.

When I saw the incidence rate I couldn't help but think about the contests you see on television tied to breakfast cereal or some other high sugar content food. Many will enter, few will win!!

I've probably had Cushings for years. It's one of those diseases that has a multitude of symptons that unfortunately could be attributed to any number of diseases. In retrospect when I go back in time and look at different things that happened healthwise and bodywise with my Cushing glasses on, I have probably had the disease since 1995. Officially diagnosed with Cushings...February 2006. A good ten years of the lemur trouncing happily through my body, undetected, to do what damage he/she can get away with.

Well not completely undetected. I had visits with physicians over the years related to problems I was having with my weight and how it was distributed, lack of energy, etc. and I'd always get the party line. Exercise more, eat less. Never mind that I'd been on 1500 calories or less a day and my weight would stay the same if I was lucky, usually it went up. 1500 calories isn't low enough, cut it down to a 1000 calories a day and use some willpower and the weight will come off. I finally just gave up. It became obvious to me regardless of what I ate or what activity level I had, my weight was going to do what it wanted to do. I would of preferred it had chosen a size 10 body image, but it had other ideas, and I was tired of stressing about it.

Being tired was attributed to my thyroid. Hair falling out, too much life stress. Abnormal, heavy menstraul cycles, early menopause. The list goes on and on.

Part of the problem is physcians don't like to get out of their comfort zone so they take whatever symptons you have and match it to a sympton pattern of a disease or condition they know about. Similar to the saying "If you have a hammer everything looks like a nail" Coupled with the fact that only 5 out of a million people ever get the disease in the first place, gives a whole lot of opportunity to completely miss the diagnosis.

I have the diagnosis, I'm not sure I want it now that I have it.