A good indicator...

I've wanted to post for a while but every time I started it wouldn't work. Mostly because I felt like I couldn't say,"I have a tumor that makes me sick" without being able to say where it was. Five months and lots of tests later, I have results and I'm in the mood for sharing.

The facts are:
-I was diagnosed with Cushing's syndrome in October
-At the recommendation of my endocrinologist in Oklahoma City I sought an out of state second opinion and differential diagnosis. Cushing's is caused by a misbehaving benign tumor that makes a hormonal ruckus. The trick is finding where it is located.
-The final test was conducted yesterday at Mass General here in Boston.
-My doctor called last evening with the results that weren't supposed to be in until Tuesday.
-"ACTH was high which is a good indicator we are looking at a pituitary tumor.
-Translation: my official diagnosis is ACTH-dependent Cushing's Disease
-(happy happy)

This is good news because had it gone the other way I would have had ACTH-independent ectopic Cushing's syndrome which meant going back to Oklahoma City, taking icky meds and having periodic scans for the next few years until something showed up. (Meh) Eric and I like the brain surgery option better, don't you? I meet with a pretty stellar neurosurgeon on Friday to discuss scheduling a time to poke up inside my nose. Boston is nice. :)

More to come!

Signs and Symptoms

Differential Diagnosis

Bilateral Inferior Sinus Sampling (02.17.12)

Freakish Taxidermy Dog

Sometimes our dog assumes what we like to call the cockroach position... and then stays there.... and DOESN'T MOVE. Or breathe it seems. .....and then he does move. And it's silly and weird. But he's our dog. And we love him.

You've got a friend in Friend, Oklahoma.

Today we found this book in the debris of this house from the tornado in this youtube video. Remember them too along with all your other American friends.

For the LOVE of dairy

Oklahoma Roughing It

Camping weekend means we learned that Oklahoma has:

Cactus


Buffalo


Naturally occurring lichen grafitti


Hiking trails


Holy Cities for Passion Pageants...



Rocks too big to jump over


The highest percentage of man made lakes in the Union


Husbands on top of mountains




It also has a burning ban because we are in a drought. Not even charcoal in a fire pit, but bringing along your own hibachi is okay. Lessons learned.

Lessons learned in appliance shopping...

A: If at all possible, read the manual AT the store for your specific model you may be purchasing BEFORE you buy it and have it delivered and it decides to pee all over your floor.

2: You don't have to live with an appliance that has a weak bladder and a scientific definition identity crisis... so RETURN it! (Imagine the face Eric made when Samsung, which is Korean mind you and close to his heart, tried to pass water off as steam).

Like we wouldn't notice. HA!

Who's your crawdaddy?

BACKSTORY:

One of the first things that I learned to love about Eric was his adventuresome relationship with food. We'd find ourselves at the grocery store and he would quite easily get distracted by something he had never tried before. If it was particularly intriguing, whatever it was, would make its way into our basket. Did we have any idea how to cook it? Probably not. Perhaps also what made it fun was finding a random foreign youtube video with really awful music and poorly translated subtitles in order to learn how to properly dice and eat a jicama root.

MAIN POINT!:

The other day I was grocery shopping at the local asian market. I found this:


Had to get it, right? I mean who wouldn't want to try this delectable looking ambiguous fruit? She got all dolled up in her leopard print goods, gave herself a vague but but enticing name... I couldn't help but take her home. :) Really, it was rindless chunks of what looked like watermelon only with small sesame seed sized black bugs stuck in white spider web looking flesh. It mildly tasted of melon with a slight crunch. After a little research I've now learned to call it dragonfruit or pitaya. It really looks like this:



When grocery shopping I also like to send him texts at work like this one: "DINNER!"
You could say that we don't discriminate when it comes to food too much. (I didn't buy the pork uteris, I promise.) So when Eric asked if I wanted to attend the crawfish boil sponsored by some company that is trying to woo Eric's employer I said, "Heck, YES!" Sidenote: wooage of energy companies by other companies = completely ridiculous. With this new job I've been learning a lot about definitions, ie. "free lunch." (More on that at some possible future juncture of time) Back to the crustaceans... NEITHER of us had had crawfish before. So, this is what happened:

There is a right way and a plehhhhhhhthora of wrong ways to eat a crawfish. You'll know it's the wrong way when you've crushed the head and its barely intelligent bits are seeping down your hand. To save you from the horror of pretreating the crawdaddy brain out of your favorite shirt, I've included a great youtube video. 1-800-CRAWFISH!

Remember: Twist, twist, pinch and pull. AHHHhh, delicious.



Also, we are still here. There were tornado watches yesterday, but we survived. I don't know if our vegtable garden will if we keep getting THIS kind of rain:



Or this kind of hail:
(May 16th 2010, OKC... it really starts cooking around a minute and a half in, if you can handle all the OMGS)


So much for the cucumbers, right?