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Miriam, Undiagnosed Bio

November 21, 2025

MaryO Diabetes, Golden Oldies, Insulin Resistance, Other Diagnosis, PCOS, Undiagnosed , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

golden-oldie

Hi. I am M and I have had healthy problems for as long as I can remember.

It started when I was 10 with severe anxiety, depression and panic attacks. Luckily, I don’t remember most of the details, but I remember being under the care of a child psychiatrist and a psychologist. I was on a cocktail of medications for about a year. As some point, my mother read a bunch about the dangers of these medications and somehow weaned me off of them. I remained under the care of my psychologist for a year or two after that.

I think we hoped at that point that things would go back to normal, or something like that, but sadly, we were very wrong. A couple of months (possibly a year) later, I was diagnosed with diabetes, shortly before my 12th birthday. This was 12 years ago, when type two diabetes wasn’t often (if at all) diagnosed in kids that age. It took the doctors a while to determine if I was type two or type one, but they eventually settled on type two. In reality, it barely made a difference, as I was on insulin and oral medication- in essence being treated for both types.

Again, I wish I could say that this was the end of my health problems, but it wasn’t. For starters, my insulin resistance was (and still is) so bad that I am on enormous doses of insulin just to maintain a non-dangerous blood sugar level. I have  been plagued by nasty skin (bacterial, yeast and abcess) infections since high school requiring hospitalization from time to time, and anti-biotics terribly frequently.

I was diagnosed with PCOS at some point, having all of the typical symptoms: facial har (I actually bought myself a hot wax pot to avoid the cost and nuisance of going to get it all removed every week or two!). My period has never been regular. I have gone as many as six months without it, but it can be more frequent also. Obviously, I am quite heavy and have struggled with weight my entire life. Dieting is a horrible situation, as it takes extreme effort for me just to maintain my weight.

About two years ago I had terrible gallstones attacks, finally having my gallbladder removed after a week in the hospital with a gallbladder infection. I also have problems with nausea and heartburn which can be very severe at times. About 10 months ago I was diagnosed with an ulcer.

At some point my endocrinologist (whom I see for the diabetes) asked about my family history at length, and then concluded that it simply didn’t all add up. I do have a family histoty of obesity and type two diabetes on both sides of my family, but nobody has ever had a problem before 45-50, other than gestational diabetes. My siblings are on the heavy side, but not obese like I am. I don’t eat differently than they do, I don’t live differently than they do. He ordered a 24 hour urine test, assuring me that he is sure it is nothing but he wants to be thorough. I pressed him for details and he admitted he is testing my cortisol levels as he suspects they may be high and causing some of my problems.

I left the doctor’s office and (against my better judgement!) googled cortisol levels. I stumbled upon cushings disease and lists of symptoms and it all just clicked. I started crying, half in fear but also half in relief. As scary as cushing sounds, I promise it can’t be worse than everything I have endured. The idea that we might be able to treat the root cause of all of my health problems sounded dreamy and amazing.

Then I got back the results of the 24 hour urine test, and it was on the high side, but still within the normal range. The doctor is completely unconcerned, but something in the back of my head can’t let this go so easily (especially reading here and on other sites about the inacuracy of that test in diagnosing cushings).

I am facing this alone, am not a good advocate for myself, and am overwhelmed already, so I let it go. But now I have a new symptom, and when googling it (again, bad idea) I came across cushings again. And now I just can’t let it go. A couple of months ago I started experiencing severe pain deep in my legs (it feels like it’s the bone) when I walk. At first, I ignored it and started to cut down my walking. Eventually it got so bad that a walk down the block brought me to tears from pain. I finally went to my GP, who sent me for an MRI of my lower back. It turns out that I have a herniated disc in my back, but the doctor explained that he doesn’t think that actually explains the matching pain in both legs, as it is only on my right side.

He checked my vitamin D level, and said it was so low it is undectable. He sent me to an orthopedist, but I am still waiting to see that doctor. I am at my wits end right now. I am not yet 24 years old, and my body is in shambles. I can’t walk a block without pain, and when I push myself to walk and stand on my feet the pain gets so bad that I have to spend a couple of days in bed recovering. My friends talk about doing all kinds of things like going on hikes or visiting the statue of liberty, and I make excuses because I know there’s no way I could physically do something like that.

Right now I am so torn. On the one hand, I have a family history of obesity and diabetes, and have been clinicly diagnosed with that. On the other hand, I read through the list of symptoms thinking “check, check, check…” I am quite large around the middle, but have super skinny wrists, ankles, fingers, etc. I don’t want to be diagnosed with cushings (or any other scary disease) but I can’t stop thinking that nobody’s luck is as bad as mine!

What do you think? Does it sound like I have cushings? If so, how should I proceed? Remeber, I am completely alone in this, I have limited resources and money, and I am timid and terrible at standing up for myself. I hope that someone here can help, because I have never felt so alone and desperate in my life.

Thank you in advance,

M

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Ginger’s Father, Adrenal bio

September 24, 2025

MaryO Adrenal, Adrenal Surgery, Golden Oldies, In Memory, Male, Treatments , , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

A Golden Oldie

this story is of my father. He was a or nurse on the transprt ship the usst sea barb during ww2, he graduated high school at age 16 and he then went to simpson college and had completed over two yrs when the war broke out. he signed up seeing how he was studing to be a doctor they signed him up in the corps.. after the war ended he went back to school. and then a year later signd up for the reserves. he continued to go to school ,work part time and work in the reerves. he and mom had two children by 1953 and he continued to do thest things. during this time some kids drove past him very fast and crashed their car. my dad getting off of the reserves and still being in uniform stopped a couple of the kids where dead but he did save the others by stabiliting them tell help arrived. and one young adult had major trama dad took his uniform jacket off and wrapped him up saving hs life tell help could get there. dad came home and mom seeing him covered in blood screamed until my dad calmed her and told her it was not his.

the year was 1957 my dad was starting to show signs of the disease he had lost an 1inch and half and at home he used to be a loving and decated husband and father but he was having more problems controling his emotions…he was in pain allot. the reserves still took my dad. and my dad had gooten a B/S degree in biology and education and he had then transfered to a methodist seminary to become a minister in 1950. by 1957 he had a nother degree and had completed chaplain school with thearmy reserves.

in 1961 i was born and the following spring he had a tabogoning accident which he could not move from and he wsa sent to fargo north dakota where it was discovered he had cushings as they called it from there he was sent to minnaplais/ minn where he stayed for 265 days. he had four major surgeries and 11 minor ones. trying to correct the symptoms of the disease. he had his gallbladder removed  mar 1963, due to gallstones, he had his adrenal glands jan/1963 removed due to the high levles of hormons.abscess from ruptured divrticulum .tepary colestemy repai at age 39 “1963”his doctor was dr. Pelzi he suffered from osteoperosis with fractures of th spine/back. clavicle and several ribs more then once.

after a serious illness in apr 1962 he was sent to fargo with compressed fractures of the spine, ankle edema, weight gain and th fractures.at the minneapolis hosp he showed he was in the late stages of the disease he had osteoperosis, with mutliple compressions fractures on inttering the hosptial in dec 1962 they found he had diverticulitis  of the sigmoid colon,5/9/63 with abscess they where drained at surgery 1/11/63 in mar at the same time they took his adrenal glands they took his gallbladder due to chronic chelecyelithiasishe was put on replacement hormone thearpy.he had high bllod pressure due to cushings. he then had to have more surgery to correct colon 5/14/1943 problem with aneatomeisi a tempary cocestomy was done and ended on 7/3/63 when  the colestomy was closed and his large bowel was then re-anastemesed.    on 7/5/1943 his family was called and told he was dying and there was nothing they could ddo to help him. mom rounded up us for kids and took us up to the hospital  dads parents had gotten there thirty minutes before and they pronounced my dad dead when they arrived.   when we got there mom called my dads name and he sat up in the bed and talked to her.  he got out of the hospital in sept of 1963. the military retired him and the methodist church also did. he was walking with the add of churths and a cain. he also could not longer control his emotions.

when he had entered the hospital they had given him a year to live. or they gave him the option for them to experiment on him. due to his young age and him being a man they felt like the research could help allot of people. the studdied him to find where the disease can from and what it did to all the systems of his body. they gave him a pention and all the hospitals etc was free due to him being in the military but on inactive statis. my dad choice to help people. he was 39 years old and i was two years old.

when dad got out of the hospital he would be calm and kind and the next mintue a raging out of control person. even though he was very weak and never could walk well picking up his feet as he walked but when he got angry he had the strength of ten men. at the hospital they had told my mom about dads changed behavior and wanted to instational lize him from then on. but my mom refused feeling he needed to be at home with his family.

dad lived and went from job to job every few months to maybe lasting a a year here or there.due to his uncontrolable temper. we moved to wyo. and he continued to go to the va hospital in cheyenne wyo trying to get stabilized.we moved from town to town and in 1964 my brother was born. dad was very unstable and wwas in constant pain. in 1967 he almost beat my mom and little brother to death. the law came and took him to the edge of twon and told him not to come back. a year latr a few dyas before his and moms divorce would have been final he called mom and begged her to let him come home she refused and he said I will kill myself mom had heard that one many times before and she said go ahead. he did on thier 25 wedding aniversary. the next day.

I tell you this story to let you know of my dad who was a good healthy man, who was a good father and dad he had two B/S degrees and was in the ww2 and in the military almost 20 years. he became a minister and was a good one i heard.  and then he got sick but instead of living without surgeryies etc he choose to help and let the doctors  experiment on him so it would help other people. his body shows his scars and i have some pictuers of him. the atopsy is a mistory abut the man who claimed to have done it said even though daddy ws 46 years old he had the body of a 98 year old man. he was lost four inchs in hiegth and wher in the last stages of canser…the md also said he did not know how daddy had lived that long with all his health concorns… i have many documents that back up what i have said… i have discovered them doing genealogy research…just me ginger hawn cooper

my dads name was Charles Hamilton Hawn the fourth..my oldest brother says daddy is in th medical books som wof the first in treating this illness…from 1962-1967

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Mae, Undiagnosed Bio

June 8, 2016

MaryO Golden Oldies, Other Diagnosis, PCOS, Undiagnosed , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

golden-oldie

 

Originally posted Sunday, October 26, 2008

I am now 34 years old and have recently moved to a new state. I really don’t know when I started to show the signs. I have had migraines since I was in junior high. I used to have dark stretch marks and major mood swings in high school. My periods were so very painful and heavy I would bleed through a sanitary napkin every hour and a half. Once I graduated I went to the health department and asked to be placed on BC pills. I was eighteen, planning on having sex, and wanting to be safe about it. Within the next three months I put on about 60 pounds.

When I first moved to Virginia I was weighing about 135 pounds on a 5’6″ frame ever so happy in a size 8. By the following January I was almost 200 pounds and in a size 20. I went from wearing form fitting clothes to wearing sweat pants and t-shirts as large as I could find them. When I asked the health department about this, I was told that you have to expect to gain weight when you first start on the birth control pills. I was an active 18 year old, I didn’t over eat, and I was a personal nanny to a very active child. I took her on walks daily for at least an hour.

Things happen, as they always do. My fiance and I broke up, I moved to another part of the state, and pretty much ate only enough to make sure I was getting some nutrients into me. Depression set in, and my whole being seemed to change. I went from being an outgoing, happy center of attention to an brooding and depressed loner. I didn’t even want to be around my family (whom I lived with at the time). I went to the doctor again. I wasn’t planning on doing anything, so I stopped taking the birth control. When I asked the doctor about the weight loss, I was told it would fade within time as long as I worked at it.

Two years go by and I worked at it, and 20 pounds went on their way. The depression was starting to ease, I felt some of my old self returning. I decided to move it along and branch back out on my own again. I vowed to take back two years of my life. I was out going again, I WAS ME! I was eating healthy, only getting fast food at the most, once a week. Eating more salads than anything, and county line danceing three to four hours (non-stop) about four times a week (one day a week was for a demonstration team). I wasn’t loosing any weight. As a matter of fact, I had started to slowly gain it again. I also had my first bout with kidney stones. I met my soon to be husband almost two years to the day of vowing to get back my lost years.

Since My husband I have married (9.5 years now), my weight has been a large roller coaster ride. I have never been back down to the 180 I was when we first met. I haven’t been below 200 since then. I have maxed out at 260 so far. Each time I feel almost like my old self, I pick up the hard dieting and working out 4-5 days a week. I love weight training. Not the body building kind, but the lean muscle building kind. I will start out loosing weight and I will keep it up. I will loose about 10 pounds before the gain starts. Then I will tell myself that the gain is muscle and it is to be expected. 20 pounds later, when I am 10 pounds more than when I started, the depression starts to set in. I keep working at it with tears in my eyes and I no longer enjoy it. Finally, when the next 5 pounds hit, I just give up. All of this takes place over about a 4 month period. The only time there was a repreve was when I was pregnant with my daughter. I went back to feeling like myself again when I was pregnant. I also lost 25 pounds while I was pregnant. I was pregnant for 6 months (she was 12 weeks early due to pre-eclampsia).

Kidney stones started happening more frequently. UTI’s (which I had never had before being pregnant) started happening about every 6 months. I had been diagnosed with endometreosis, and the ovarian cycst I had been diagnosed with at 17 had come back. I was diagnosed with depression, and was always being told by the doctor that I needed to loose weight. No matter now many times I told him that I tried only to gain it, it was like he never heard me.

My break through came about a year and a half ago. I was reading one of my mother’s Reader’s Digest’s she had left at my house. I was shocked. It was almost like reading my own story. That night I hopped on line and came to this website. There was a diagram hand drawn of what a body could look like with Cushings. While I was reading the symptoms, my husband walked in. He asked when I had posed for the drawing. I broke down in tears. My wonderful husband came over and held me while I cried it out. Then listened as I explained it to him. I still didn’t have the courage to ask my doctor about it.

The following month, the recurring UTI’s started. I was getting one every two -three weeks. Then my mind started to go. Like one of the bio’s I have read here, it felt like there was an alien in my head. I could see myself acting in ways that weren’t me. I couldn’t even interact with my daughter without having flashes of anger. The depression medication pretty much stopped working, and there were times I couldn’t even stand myself. I finally found the courage.

I made an appointment to see my PCP. Since there was nothing ‘wrong’, the earliest they could see me was a month away, I agreed. I nearly called back to cancel the appointment at least three times. I kept it. He wasn’t very supportive. I was overweight and fat people like us have to find a way to loose it was pretty much what he said. But he would order and 24 hour UFC test. and we would go from there. Guess what? It was high. He refered me to an Endo. Wonderful Endo. I hated leaving him.

I went to see Dr. Barnes and he listened to me. I took pictures of me for every year since I was 18(which took a while to gather since I haven’t really had any pictures taken of me for the last 8 years). He asked me questions. He listened to me. He made me feel as if what I had to say was important and needed to be heard. Then we did the exam. He talked, measured, asked, and explained the whole time. He looked at the hair loss, the hair that was growing where it shouldn’t, even the stretch marks that have long since faded to white (but once in a while flair red). He ordered a dexa test. Then he put me on blood pressure medication (my blood pressure had been creeping up for about a year), started me on Fortamet to help ease some of the symptoms, and ordered me back in two weeks. The test came back only slightly elevated. Enough to be over the norm, but not eoungh to confirm a diagnosis. He ordered a midnight cortisol test (it was now about almost 2 months since I first saw him). The results were on the high side of normal. He wanted to keep an eye on me. He couldn’t diagnose me, but he felt that my concern was warrented. He wanted to keep on eye on me. I was to see him every three months. If my symptoms were to come back, then I was to call him immidiately.

Four months ago I had to say good-bye to Dr. Barnes. I moved with my husband when he retired from the military. I am now back to the drawing board. I have a wonderful PCP now (which I didn’t before). She listened to me and refered me to an Endo. I left the new Endo’s office very exasperated. She walked into the appointment and didn’t even shake my hand. Strike one. Next came the physical exam. She felt my thyriod, one point in her favor. That was all she checked, strike two. Then, right there told me that I was diabetic (go figure that the last blood test I got said my sugar levels were excellent) and I had PCOS. The woman had only known me for ten minutes, if that, and was diagnosing me without seeing blookwork results or anything else. Third and final strike. I am still so put off by this experience, I haven’t gotten the nerve to go back to my PCP and ask for another referal. The Endo did do a dexa test, and said that according to that test, there was no way that I could have Cushing’s and that was the end of it.

Since then, I have had my gall bladder removed after having a gall stone pains for the last 4 years that no one could find. I also have two new kidney stones. One of them about a half an inch in diameter (again). The fatigue has returned. Insomnia is hitting again. Depression is setting in. My temper is starting to flare for the slightest wrong. My concentration is failing. When I changed the chanel and found the Mystery Diagnosis on about Cushing’s, I felt that was God’s way of pushing me. So, when the week starts, I will be calling my PCP and see if there is another Endo she can refer me to. As the song goes, ‘Here I go again on my own”.

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