FAQ's

There are some questions that most of you have so I thought I'd address them en masse.  You know how much I love efficiency!!

1)When is your Adrenalectomy surgery scheduled for?
Tomorrow Wednesday February 25th.
2)What does not having your adrenal glands mean to your everyday life?
Other than having to take the steroids that the adrenal glands produce by mouth every day, not a whole lot.  Cortisol will be replaced by synthetic hydrocortisone, and everything will be replaced by a drug called florinef.  I'll take hydrocortisone 2-3 times during the day (to mimic the natural arc on which our bodies produce cortisol), and florinef once.  This will be SO much nicer than the drug regimen I am currently on!
3)Is it really that easy?
No, of course not.  Nothing is that easy.  If I'm sick, or have some sort of trauma to my body, I need much more replacement hydrocortisone to mimic the body's natural response to these conditions otherwise my system will be seriously compromised.  Like I could die compromised.  If I'm sick, I can just take more hydrocortisone for several days and, working with my doctor, I should feel fine.  If I get hit by a bus, or end up in a situation where I cannot verbally tell someone that my body doesn't produce these steroids, I will be wearing a medic alert bracelet so that the health care professionals know what to do.  I also will have to carry an emergency dose of injectable hydrocortisone in case Adrenal Insufficiency sneaks up on me and I find myself in a bad situation.  However, if I diligently pay attention to how I'm feeling and what my body is telling me, I shouldn't need to use it.
4)Can you exercise?
As much and as hard as I want.  The steroid levels naturally produced by the adrenal glands are not effected by exercise.  It isn't the same as the stress put on by injury or illness.  My hips and age are more impactful on my athletic capacity than anything having to do with not having adrenal glands. 
5)Are you done at the NIH or will you still have to go back to Bethesda?
My NIH doctors still want to find the tumor that is causing my Cushing's Syndrome.  Because the tumors are very slow growing, and the scans at this level are pretty radioactive, they will only need me to return every 2 years or so to be rescanned and tested.  If/when they do find the tumor it will be relatively inconsequential to my life.  It's not even something that in most cases would need to be removed if found.  Without adrenal glands it won't have any effect on how my body functions.  But my case won't really be able to be "closed" until we find the little bugger.
6)When  will you be able to go home?
We are aiming to get me discharged on Monday March 2nd.  Recovery should go pretty quickly given that the surgeons suck out the glands through small holes in either side of my abdomen.  There is some moving of the internal stuff around to get to the adrenals, but when it comes to recovery, if all according to plan it should be relatively easy.  This spoken by a person who had 3 hip replacements in 3 years so maybe my perspective on recovery is a little skewed...but the recovery and discharge timeline is coming from my doctors.  I'm not just making it up in my head.

I'm looking forward to this surgery as weird as that sounds.  I'm ready for this to be over, and can think of no other place I'd rather be in to make that happen.  I'll get back to just being Carol, not Carol the Cushing's patient and nothing could be better than that!!