Last year I moved to Manchester for university and found myself in a nice little flat of 3 girls. It was meant to be a flat of 4 boys and 4 girls but alas, the luck of Hannah strikes again and I was placed in the one flat in the corner of the block that only has one floor... above the warden (you'll soon get to know that if there's ever a chance to go down a path of normality, fate decides I don't have the option). Anyway, in the end it didn't turn out bad, I was placed with two other lovely girls and we got to know each other and grew quite close.
I'm still living with one of the girls and I just finished a conversation with her about my diagnosis and how things have all pieced together. Whilst living with me, throughout the whole of first year, she was exposed to all my ailments and little strange things about me and used to mock me because I never seemed to stop adding to the list (but this is coming from a girl who has never tried a noodle before, so the banter swung both ways). Now we realise that I'm not in fact weird (but I guess I kind of am), I'm just a victim of Cushing's Disease. We stayed up and thought about all the things we just used to laugh about in first year but were actually a result of my hormone imbalance:
- my skin getting worse and worse (when I came back from a weekend trip home and showed her acne cream I had to keep in the fridge we laughed about it just being another thing that I have wrong with me)
- my hair being EVERYWHERE. Falling out all over the shop (she once found one of my hairs in her baked beans and I wasn't even there. Drives her mad).
- my mood swings. I've always known I don't cope well with stressful situations so don't tend to put myself in them, so I don't really have a psycho reputation but I tend to have a really fired up moment and then suddenly switch off and numb myself to any kind of involvement and visa versa.
- staying up until about 5am doing nothing that can't be done during the next day (like now).
- sweating within about 4 or 5 seconds of change (I'm sure it grossed her out when I used to wipe sweat out my cleavage but she and I just had to suck it up and get on with it).
- my back and hip aches and pains (although this does overlap with Elhers-Danlos so I always told her that wasn't me being weird and it was actually a medical condition and she wasnt allowed to mock me)
- not being able to string a sentence together. Everyone else can bang out an essay overnight but it takes me about 15 minutes to be able to construct a sentence that actually reads what I mean for it to say.
- My constant and odd bruising- also put this down to Elhers-Danlos
- My hair feeling like a cross between a pube and an electrical wire (just thought hormones had changed and I'd been given the short straw again)
- Me being super heat sensitive and not being able to have hot showers
- My AWFUL hangovers/ migraines/ feeling like I'm on deaths door after one pint of less than 4%.
- My impaired peripheral vision and my 'blurry days' that caused me to trip up even if I was wearing my glasses (I also suffer from very sensitive eyes (to both physical things like water, chlorine, make up etc. and light exposure) but I'm not sure whether this has any relation to Cushing's)
- My forgetfulness
- My sudden urges of thirst (I only ever drank out of my bigger-than-pint sized tankard and always downed it in one)
- My sudden urges to pee
- Waking up at least three times a night to use the toilet
- My lack of sex drive (but being amidst the Manchester Freshers scene I wouldn't want a sex drive anyway)
And it probably explains my massive weight gain, buffalo hump, excessive marks (and stretch marks) all over my skin, hairy sideburns, lack of enthusiasm and energy and inability to endure any vigorous exercise to her but she's too polite to have bantered about them.
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