Last week Paris, this week Bethesda. My what a difference a week makes...
I'm here for a 6 month recheck for the darn tumor that is causing me all this trouble. So I have two weeks full of being injected and scanned from stem to stern on the hunt for the little bugger. Just for the fun of it I had to pee in a jug for two days. Good times. And of course there are the 6am blood draws by my favorite phlebotomist Raj. I am scheduled to leave here on the 23rd just in time to be home for Christmas.
Being an inpatient at the NIH gives me a renewed perspective on my life and my illness. I've been kind of wrapped up in my own life lately as it revolves seemingly never endingly around Cushings. But when I come here and see the really sick people, I'm reminded that I have it easy. As I've said before, my tumor isn't going to kill me. It may make my life and my health a pain in the ass to manage, but it won't kill me. Not everyone has the luxury of being able to say that. I don't even look sick anymore. So when I'm waiting in the Nuclear Medicine department to be injected with something that comes in a lead box and makes my insides glow, I look like the thing that is not like the others. The thing that doesn't belong. What a great feeling that is. While I am not cured, my symptoms are being managed. Not in a way that will work in the long term, but for now it's all good. My hair is growing back and my skin is back to normal. My weight and shape are pretty much pre-Cushings.
I have nothing to complain about.
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