Here I am back at the NIH one year after my last stay. For the most part everything is the same. Some of the faces have changed, some of the department locations have changed (construction everywhere in the scanning departments. I have already walked into two walls where doorways used to be.), some of the procedures have changed. But the routine is the same. Medication, blood draws, fast/no fast, inject, scan, rescan, rescan again, eat, sleep, start the whole thing over again. If I'm lucky I can squeeze in workout, a walk outside, go to patient library and maybe watch tv (they have cable here - a luxury we no longer have at home!). Whatever it takes to not get bored out of my mind in between visits into the "tube".
You'd think that a visit here at the NIH would remind me just how sick I am; something I can easily forget these days. Sure I have alarms of every kind going off every six hours plus at 3:30pm to take medications, but that's just become a part of the day. I feel pretty good most of the time. I am able to work again, I go to the gym, I eat what I want and basically don't have to worry about much of anything...except where my next dose of medication comes from (thank you NIH!). Next to the other people who are patients here I feel and look healthy as a horse! An uber fabulous horse, but giddyup none the less. A stay here at the NIH instead of reminding me that Cushing's rules my life and I'm not the healthy person I look like on the outside, makes me feel a little guilty that I have it so good. And really, don't we all need that perspective?
I have said it before and I'll say it yet again. I am very lucky. I have support and resources that most people don't have. I also have a disease that most people don't have, but that's a whole other blog post. For now, I appreciate what I do have. Later comes later.
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