Is that a jug in your fridge, or are you just happy to see me?

Those of you who have not been in my Cushing's loop since April have not had the chance for me to regale you with the ins and outs of the Cortisol hormone measuring 24 hour urine collection test. Let me tell you now, no refrigerator has been used to it's fullest potential until it holds a big brown jug of pee on the door next to the milk.  And no, I'm not kidding.  I've had to do this several times in Kansas City - saving 24 hours worth of pee in a jug in the fridge, then it gets sent off to the Mayo Clinic to be analyzed.  They do things a little different here, like split my "deposit" in two and analyze it here, but basically these two pictures describe my day:

 This is actually the second time I've done this since I've been here.  Monday was a pee in the jug day too.  I am not complaining mind you.  Really, in the scheme of invasive testing, peeing in a jug is a walk in the park!  But I didn't get very far away from the fridge today.

It was a long day of testing at Medical Freak Camp today.  It started with blood draws at 11:30pm and midnight last night, and continued with the am contrast to those blood draws at 6 and 6:30 am this morning.  Then, just because we were on a roll with the blood letting, 6:00am also started research test blood draws every 4 hours all day.  Those will end at 2:00am tomorrow (Friday) morning.  I also had an additional bone scan.  

Today also brought the official diagnosis of Diabetes.  For those of you who haven't read up on your Cushing's symptoms and fun, Diabetes and bone loss are just 2 of the many medical wheels that can fall off your cart when your Cortisol goes ape-crap wild.  My gaggle of medical professionals are of the mindset that my body's inability to metabolize glucose is totally Cushing's related and if we can get it under control, my system will go back to metabolizing normally.  And so far so good on the bones.  The bad news is that I'm now on a double restricted diet during my stay here at the NIH Clinical Center.  Low sodium (blood pressure is still too high and yes, that's a Cushing's symptom too) and diabetic.  Do a venn diagram on those two diets and the intersection is BLAND!

Up tomorrow on Carol's dance card is the infamous Petrosal Sinus Sampling.  I had this test done in St.Louis back in June...or was it May?  It all runs together after a while.  Anyway, it's a very cool test where they run a catheter up to the pituitary through veins in your groin and through the heart.  This test will hopefully rule in or rule out the pituitary as the source of my problem.  The results of the St.Louis IPSS showed that the pituitary was not my problem.  We'll see if the same results occur tomorrow.  Stay tuned!

Oh, and I also have more blood tests for my gaggle of Neurology doctors to try to rule out some causes of the mysterious drop and lack of control I have over my left foot that is not an attributable symptom of Cushing's.  I just wanted to spread the love Baby!

I will hopefully have a collection of fabulous haiku poems up tomorrow.  We'll see how the day goes!  Keep 'em coming!!