Losing it.

Last Christmas, I was with my family at my parents home in California. It was in the shower that I first really noticed I was losing my hair. More than the normal hair loss we all experience as humans. As a full time student, full time employee, wife and mother, I thought I was just stressed out. I'd heard that hair loss was a possible symptom of stress. Plus, it was Christmastime, an unnecessarily stressful time of year.

I told my husband on the drive home that I needed to schedule an appointment to visit my doctor back home to see what I could do to help stop the hair loss. When I got back home, post-Christmas cleaning up and organizing, preparing for the next semester to start, and the regular day-to-day stuff distracted me from my hair issue.

I noticed I was breaking out on my neck, chin, and around the ears. I'd never broken out like that before. I noticed other things about my body that were changing, but that I never correlated to each other. My husband noticed a hump on my upper back. We both thought I needed to not slouch so much at my computer at work. I'd also spent several months previously dieting and working out three times a week vigorously in an attempt to get healthy and fit. Last October I got braces and this is important to know.

Well, with all of the working out and dieting, my face and neck never slimmed down. In fact, with all of the crunches I was doing (50 center and 50 each side, three times a week), I never could see the results of my labors. My tummy was still chunky looking.

In January of this year, I went home from work feeling like my emotions were pushed to the extreme. I just sat at my desk crying and didn't know why.

On January 19, 2009, I finally went to my doctor. I brought her a bag of my hair that I collected that morning between the shower, the sink, the floor and my brush. I had blood drawn and a few days later, she called me with the results.

Cushing's Syndrome or Disease - it was unclear which it was at this point. I needed to do more tests.