Easter

Happy Easter to all!  I'm not quite sure how to incorporate both the risen Lord and Cushing's Disease, except to say today is a beautiful, glorious day. 

Yesterday I was overwhelmed with negative responses to something I posted online.  I had already woken up feeling cold, with shaky muscles and zero appetite (all low cortisol symptoms).  Since I'm on this tight-rope, I decided to see how things went and not react too early.  Amazingly, my blood pressure stayed fairly stable (only dropped to 112/67) but my pulse skyrocketed to 127 and stayed there for hours.  I tried to hold off taking hydrocortisone because for the most part I wasn't having other negative symptoms, and just drink more of my salty, half-strength lemonade while watching some old "the Voice" videos on hulu.  It kind of worked, but only minimally.

Since increasing my GH dose back to .4/night a few days ago, I have again had some minor headaches and a kind of stiff-neck ache with tinnitus.  It's worse at night/morning and when lying down.  The pain actually wakes me up and feels like the pain when your neck is fully unsupported all night, even though I have a firm, foam contoured pillow giving me full support.  So, I wake and roll over, adjust my pillows (because it FEELS like they're the issue) and I am back to not sleeping well enough and it being hard to get up in the morning.  Blah.  It eventually went away last time I increased my GH dose, but since my Endo said he thought the symptoms were of too-low cortisol and not intercranial hypertension, I decided to try a small dose of hc at bed time (2.5 mg, half of a small pill). 

That 1/2 a pill did perk me up a bit, but I was able to sleep well and it really DID seem to help me sleep better and without all that pain.  But the really cool thing that has happened probably all 3(or 4) times I've taken hc since being on GH?  I woke up with a significant weight loss!  WHAT?!  At least twice now I've had that happen, not believed my eyes (or assumed my memory switched numbers from the time I got off my scale and went to write the note on my symptom-tracking card). 

A little of that is water weight, but I track enough input/output to know that's not all it is.  And this keeps happening, even when it's obviously not just water weight, and it's a significant amount!  I know that both too high cortisol and too low can disrupt sleep.  And I know both too high and too low cortisol can interfere (stop, reverse) weight loss, but...WOW!  I'm so used to thinking of cortisol as the enemy, even now, and as causing my massive weight gain that it's hard to imagine it helping me lose now.  I'm now at a 20lb loss, without effort.  I hope we can figure out how much I need and when, or my body will start producing enough on it's own that I don't have to even worry about it, and that the loss can continue either way.  I can't wait till my energy levels also increase, and I can start adding muscle mass and exercise to add to my weight loss.  (Okay, I truly do care more about functionality and health rather than the "looks" side of weight loss, but lets be real...it's still nice!)

It was a great and surprising way to start my Easter morning!