I am the mother of an 18 year old daughter who I suspect has Cushing’s. Kristy was diagnosed with Tourette’s Syndrome when she was in the 5th grade. She suffers from mild to severe motor tics.

Fast forward to the end of her Freshman year and high school when she started to develop depression, anxiety and unexplained episodes of vomiting along with rash covering her entire body which the doctors just said was eczema She also developed stretch marks all over her breast, abdomen and thighs. I asked the dermatologist and she said she was just growing. She was the same size she had been for the last 2 years and was actually losing weight. I took her to a neurologist who diagnosed her with Cyclic vomiting syndrome. By May of the following year she was seeing a therapist and then went to see a psychiatrist who put her on Prozac. Her rash immediately cleared up. I asked the doctor about cortisol I figured her body must be producing to much and he said yes it was causing a stress rash.

Her mood improved temporarily and everything was blamed on the Tourette Syndrome. She started gain weight and by her Senior year she had gained 60 pounds and she barely ate. Her face became moon shaped and the majority of her weight was carried in the abdomen area. Her anxiety continued to get worse along with severe fatigue. We saw more doctors who just told her to lose weight and go to therapy to learn to live with her symptoms because there is nothing they could do for her. In June we found a new psychiatrist at U of M who increased her dosage of Prozac to the max dosage. She still has know improvement and she even attended anxiety classes to try to learn to cope.

She is now suffering from severe brain fog , has difficulty speaking and gets confused easily. In November she started having vomiting episodes and a rash again so that brought me back to thinking about her cortisol levels. I started searching the internet once again and stumbled upon Cushings once again. The light bulb went off! I ran downstairs and checked the back of her neck and there was a Buffalo Hump that wasn’t there in June. That is when I knew we may have found the answer.

We saw a new family doctor in December and she took us seriously and ordered Prolactin, testosterone, Thyroid, 24 Hour free urine cortisol and a Cortisol blood test. The Prolactin and Urine Cortisol came back elevated. The blood Cortisol 8am test cam back at the highest end of normal. We met with her psychiatrist and he agrees that it may be Cushings. We will see him on Feb. 1 and he is going to review her labs with a endocrinologist. We have an appointment with an endocrinologist on March 2 and are waiting to get into another endocrinologist at the University of Michigan. Praying for an answer!

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