Well, I’m 29 now and still undiagnosed. If Cushing’s is what’s wrong with me, I have had it for quite a long time. I gained a lot of weight (60 lbs) the last 2 years of high school (17-18 years old). I lost 30 lbs at age 19 (I just didn’t eat much) and have since gained 70 lbs.

But, I really wonder if this all began when I was a child. However, I was tall, and Cushing’s is supposed stunt growth, so who knows. I was always the tallest kid (male or female) until about seventh grade, and ended up being 5’11”. When I started school I suddenly went from a fairly normal weight to having a giant, hanging belly with stretch marks. I remember by first grade (age 7) wondering where all this fat had come from. My parents blamed it on sitting in school all day, since I was an active child and ran around all day when I was younger, and we ate healthy meals. So, my parents put me in every sport possible: softball starting at age 6, basketball (2 teams) at age 9, soccer at about age 9, volleyball at age 12, golf at age 15. I would go on numerous diets, with the Scarsdale diet working well (high protein, very low calorie, but hard on my gallbladder), and I lost a lot with a 1500 calorie/day low-fat diet. In middle and high school, I was doing 2 hour sports practices (mostly cardio the entire time) every day, year round. I think my face has looked round since elementary school, and pictures from 2007 show a buffalo hump. I sweat more than everyone else (my Dad’s theory was that I developed more sweat glands because of all the sports).

My periods have always been irregular (starting at age 10), sometimes with 4-5 months in between, until I started birth control pills at 19 to regulate them. We figured it was because of stress or all the sports. I had fairly bad acne from about age 12-19, and since then usually still have a few zits, although now I have more body acne. My stretch marks are everywhere, along with spider veins, but the stretch marks are only pink and about 0.5-1 cm wide at their worst. Freshman year of college, I developed a cyst at the base of my tailbone the got horribly infected (I could barely walk) and it had to be surgically removed, leaving a big hole where my tissue had to grow to fill it (my surgeon told me it would take 6 weeks to heal and couldn’t understand why it took 6 months instead). I had many ear infections as a child (pink amoxicillin is yummy), and since age 20 get several sinus, ear or throat infections each year, requiring antibiotics.

Starting in middle school, I would get horrible acid reflux that would keep me up all night (in the days before all the drugs for it, so I really can’t stand Tums anymore). It went away for awhile, and then I started getting bad abdominal pain Sophomore year of college, like cramps unrelated to periods, and skipped a lot of classes because of pain and fatigue. At that point, I thought I either had mono or was severely depressed, because I was just so tired and wanted to sleep all the time. The pain went away after 6 months, but then I developed severe stabbing pain (age 24) in first my lower and then middle and upper abdomen, first diagnosed as IBS and finally after 3 years as a collapsed gallbladder. By the time it was removed, I had recurrent mono, a sinus/throat infection that required 3 rounds of antibiotics, was very fatigued and could barely walk. I still have some abdominal pain, maybe from post-gallbladder surgery syndrome or acid reflux.

I have always gotten stiff, sore muscles, which I attributed to the sports, but now I get even more stiff muscles. I also started getting joint pain in the last few years, it continues to get worse. Even in third grade the teacher noticed my extremely tense shoulders. In the last several years I have also started to become impatient, irritable, moody, and have anxiety and a quick temper (I was extremely even-tempered and calm until after college). I am also getting fuzzier mentally, with a bad memory, lack of concentration, and easily distracted, and often I just feel like I am loosing my ability to think and becoming stupid. Sorry to be so long, there are many more symptoms but you get the idea.

 

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