Disease Mascots Take Two

I recently learned the symbol used in the new group of people I am associated with on my job



Crohns & Co.:

So without further a- doo

Behold,



 

The Cushings Disease/Syndrome Community's Mascot:

The Zebra

With the  "extra"  time that I have in my life after working my job newest job at
Crohns &Cushings & Co. (short for come what may)

the 'newest known physical event' has been wreaking havoc as it volleys with my Crohns and has been doing this for some time. So I haven't even been paid for my time wrestling with what I thought was just Crohns, Readers.

I am going to have to change my business cards. Wait I don't have any. Just this blog. And this post is stale....... one of those that I roll off the ship like a barrel of bad whiskey on a Pirate Ship commandeered by missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

Some of the old crew has stayed on but as Captain I had to stop off at a port and pick up a crew that knew how to add pictures, do some editing, and all the while taper off prednisone. Me. Not the crew.
So I have been a little touchy.

*
disclaimer here, I have been tapering off prednisone for the last four years so that last sentence is a y666

 *

 Yes-

An animal.

Which, in my opinion, an animal is better than just a color because an animal can bring personality

 

(photo courtesy of Madagascar.tribute.

See? What if Marty were all one color and lacked the funny? Or lacked horse sense?

 

 

However, the harmless, exotic looking

(pixshark.com- Marty's chin hair is one of the Cushings Disease side effects! No color can do that!)

zebra,







hardly describes the symptoms that accompany Cushings. Well, the chin hair.... but I perused the new forums and another set of people's bio's about their disease and I was overwhelmed.

 

First of all I had to learn to spell some new words.

 

 

 

 

 

Like hypothalamus. I didn't care to learn how in Anat and Phys. so I just called it hypo. (is it the or tha after it?)

Anyway, there were other things that I had to mentally digest- the reason why I had developed it.

Answer: Long term prednisone use.

That killed me.

I had this weight on my shoulders, not the buffalo hump that accompanies this disease/syndrome, but the people that have this. Thanks, coming soon. net for the picture above.

 

 They are eating 1100 cal. a day and gaining weight. One lady, a psychologist or something, had a vlog on a site. There are people starving themselves, losing some weight, OR still gaining. Meaning the body was holding onto the water in an attempt to save it for later.

 

The body literally is in survival mode and thinks it needs to store away fat rather than give the nutrients now.

 

Yay!

 

I thought

 

 as all this sunk in.

 

(Richard Parker looking at the ship as he sinks for a bit- thanks filmspotting.net.)

 

 I mean, I knew I had it and researched it and a billion times read through stuff but the blaring signature of the Dr. stating it on his script pad to show the non-believers, well it was like................ something I can't think of cause I am editing this in the middle of the night as my esophagus has acid from my stomach burning it. Oh, I know. It made me feel like a Zebra ran through my room like

some animal from Life of Pi. For those of you who read it or saw the movie and then read it,

I read it six years ago.

That is Mr. Pie's version of Richard Parker sinking after the ship started sinking and it sunk in he was sure outta luck. 

Where was I?

 

Oh, another disease plus Crohns.

 

 

One disease is enough  now I have this thing called Cushings Syndrome?

 

And to make matters worse, there were those with the disease of Cushings. And with that, a tumor was found either on the adrenal glands or pituitary gland.
 

(The Pit.Gland is brain area- by the eye brows. The spelling is below so I can abbreviate it.)

 

(www2.estrellamountain.com gives us this scrunchy wearing gal's photo to show us location of the gland. Estrella is Star in Spanish & Ya'll know what means, Readers! Yup, the Pit gland in my brain has this fixation for an etsy store that sells estrellas and I just sit and look at them because my hypothalamus gland gets the signal.)

 

 

In a Medical Journal I read that they are beginning to wonder whether the tumor caused the symptoms or the symptoms caused or vice versa.

 

?

 

I am tempted to do 'does the egg come before the chicken' research and submit it to that journal of medicine, but like I told you before, I turned my brain off.

 

I know. Many of you are in medical school reading medical journals for a degree and I am using my precious time when I can't sleep due to side effects of my job, to do your homework.

 

I'm sorry- I would give you the cliff note version but it is all in my brain somewhere.

Probably by the hypothalamus. Which is the part that sends signals like a texting teenager to my body.

body.


(gorgview. com)

 

And like that teen, it sends or receives dumb, un-thought out text messages.

 

*Can I just say the sound of my son mowing is music to my ears?

uh-oh

he just walked in............................

 

J: "Pops, says to mow clock-wise when I am bagging the grass. And when I mulch, I have to mow counter clock-wise.

 

ME: ? "I'm on prednisone and it makes me dyslexic and unable to spell dyslexia without spellcheck, so don't ask me why he has you do that. I bet it is to fluff the grass a different way or something random like that. Don't sweat it.

 

 

 

Online I've gotten the most benefit from not only putting random pics on my blog like the one above that teaches kids to mow, but

 reading about ANIMALS with the disease.

Because that is the majority of people, I mean animals that have this disease and is on the web. Why is that?

I click Cushings and Equine Magazine or Veterinarians had PDF files on dogs that have this disease and there are people who blog about their dog having it and I am super confused.



As confused as many of you that Richard Parker was able to be on a life boat for so long without losing his mind, I mean dying.

Finding a human article was like finding a horse in the haystack information on humans.

In fact, this is what I found about the metabolic disorder in the horse from a magazine entitled:

The Horse

 

 

'The hormonal imbalance in Cushing's disease results in clinical signs including a long, shaggy coat that doesn't shed out in the spring or summer, undue sweating, a heavy intake of water and resultant frequent urination, increased appetite, pot-bellied appearance, lethargy, loss of topline muscle, and laminitis.'

 

Yes.       Yes.              &           YES!!!!

Me too. I mean me Four! Does this mean I can write a book like Life of Pi but I call it:
Life of Rhubarb Pie???

 
(imgur.com)

For you new readers, I wanted to write a book. I hate Rhubarb. Love Rhubarb Pie. It was a pipe dream because I was so sick I couldn't get it together and then I started to blog....
Hey, that gives me an idea. Pay J. to edit my posts. Bingo. Whew.
That is a load off.

 I didn't shed, however I felt thirsty all the time and had to leap to the loo all the time and the constant sweating made me have to buy Pedilytes for electrolyte replacement.
Those things are FIVE dollars a pop! And don't taste like pop, Readers.

 

Readers, I thought the mascot should be the HORSE! But then I found out why it is the Zebra so hold tight and I will get to it but first I need to ramble like an ol cowboy sitting by the fire and telling a tale.

*Remember Apple Bottoms? Not to be confused with the name brand of jeans that came up when I tried to Google the unfortunate horse that developed Cushings, I am referring to. Here is the horse.

Apple Bottom

I feel so sorry for Apple Bottoms, the horse. She has straight hair and curly hair. Some of her mane has fallen off and longer hair has grown in other places you wouldn't expect to see, even on a horse.

And, before this picture was taken she had long hair under her big tummy you can see she still does but it is combed and not freakin' out.



Look at her back!

 

 It can barely bare the load of her trunkal obesity!

And her tail bone is riddled with RA! And her front feet- I mean legs- are very weak compared to the weak back ones. (The article on her said all this. And I felt I had a friend in all this.)



She is the apple of my eye for being the poster horse for the disease even if she isn't our mascot. Apple stars for teachers is a great idea for end of year gifts! Photo courtesy of esty store: Piggy & Dirt where Kurt and his wife Rebecca make you a star. Figuratively.

*AAAHHH! Someone help her! Ahhhhh! I could end up looking like Apple Barrel I mean Bottom!*

She probably feels bad she can't fit into the pants below that bear her name. Do horses get counseling? Or just turn into glue? Is AB used for research for us humans?? I want to get to the bottom of this~



I have never even heard of these jeans. But there Ya go; AB jeans. Just to rub it in.

That you can bet your bottom dollar- you won't ever fit into. Again. If you have Cushings. Unless you get a rare infection that causes you to lose weight and then go in for plastic surgery to have them tell you that you can't have it due to the fatty tissue intertwined with the muscle and you could die.  And there is more bad news for you- hey, I bet you Readers are waiting for me to get to the O word:

Obesity. The jump from being wasting away, to just right but don't know it cause it feels like I am huge and I'm only a size 12 and have skewed sense of what is proportionate due to comments that I looked great when I was a 2 and dying versus a 12 and dying, then the jump to the big dogsL

 "over weight" -ish when things are a bit snug, then having to worry if J is worried about the Yo Momma jokes.

My P.T. knows some sweet ones but they are twisted and start out like:

'Yo' Momma said to get yourself over to Europe!'

Kid: 'How am I gonna do that? '

Keep swimming.

I laughed.

So I went from into a weird Cushings stage where I started to feel like I was the girl in Willy Wonka's factory who starts to have some bloating beyond the rib cage that was previously jutted out along with the hip bones.

And then, like her, I got bigger and it was harder to put a belt around a blueberry.
and I jumped from 1x to 3x in nothing flat.

Then Cushings did the unthinkable. It brought a word into my dietary diary that I never dreamed of:

OBESITY.
More on obesity later.

(Horses with what was called Cushings but now they have some other name for it like PPID or something. Can you see the horses' stunted hooves? And the first one's back??? No wonder my spine is KILLING)

 

It's called LAMINITIS.

The horse on the far right, Hulahalla-   had an article on her in a magazine called :

'The Environmental Factor' during 1/15; and it said:

 

"Laminitis  made it too painful for Hulahalla to stand. In this 2011 photo, she is wearing a pair of equine gel orthotic comfort boots on her front hooves, a common veterinary treatment to help ease pain in cases of wounds, drains, casts, and other special conditions."

               (Photo courtesy of Robert Warren)





         

(Photo courtesy of Kurt, @ etsy.com. His store: Piggy &Dirt.)

Readers!

         Even Hula's orthotics look better than what I , a human being, get to wear starting next week.

Boy can I feel her pain. Walking on feet with this Cushings is like walking on glass; you don't want to stand up unless it's  fire drill necessity.  Which actually happened to me- but it wasn't a drill. Real fire.

Horses are usually giving someone, like us, a piggy back and that would be hard with a cane or walking stick. Or snow shoe pole from Eddie Bauer. So they win at who has it worse in the human vs. horse Cushings Disease. Also cause they are trailblazers for meds for us humans. Thanks, horses everywhere!

 (ourmigs.com)

However, they do have some  instances when they work their whole life and then sprain an ankle winning money for someone and then are euthanized.  How fair is that? If I ran my butt off I'd want to play out in the pasture in my AFO orthotic like the rest of the common horses.

(my balance stick of choice. At Sportsman Warehouse Warren hooked me up with rubber bottoms so it wouldn't slip on concrete surfaces. Like the ones in their store. I like nice people!
And helpful ones. Thanks W. ! J. loves your store so that means I am in there more than most apple shaped mothers.)
Thanks to snowshoes.com for the picture below.

* It is a different day. Yup, this blog is taking a long time. Means I need to get to the point. I woke up early. 4-ish. Had a date with J. last night. Wore me out. We just went out for some custard and picked up my cousin to go get custard at Nielsen's Frozen Custard and ended up
at Arby's. I let my cousin choose where we would eat. So we had to go to Nielsen's afterward.

That''s another post.

Anyway, I woke cause my chest is burning.

I should not have eaten at Arby's and then eaten a concrete vanilla custard with caramel mixed in

So I am drinking chalk. And some Miralax. The one is supposed to coat my throat. I think it just writes assignments in it. The miralax is to counteract what the chalk has written; and make me regular. After that I have to get ready for the day or just sit here.

Then in 30 minutes I can take  ppi, better known as a proton pump inhibitor. It stops acid. I take that back it makes me think it was stopped all this time but it was a Band-Aid. The whole time it was just doing its thing; making acid and I kept eating things that made more of it and then I guess my Crohns just camped out in that area.

 





(rhymeetreason.com)
This photo attempts to use a Zebras to summarize the PAIN.

Reader,

    A PPI (proton pump inhibitor) may sound like something used in a car rather than your plumbing, but it is actually something you swallow. And new information is telling us that what killed that fire you felt in your chest after eating some Hot Wings- actually is causing some weak bones and you possibly have fractured something already, are in a nursing home, or worse, the hospital.

Whatever PPI I take, the generic brand, or brand name, and wait  3o minutes before I can drink some Rice water- isn't and hasn't been helping pump anything anywhere except maybe where it hurts.

 Nothing seems to be working.

 *I now know why- I had a double knot tied in my chest  (esophageal stricture)where my esophagus tried to keep the acid from coming up to my brain. Thanks esophagus. However, it took the doctors a long time to take care of this knot, known as a "stricture" in the medical world.

 

It has only been a few days I cut out my beloved Reeds Dairy milk.

*with a stricture I would have to cut out all food, liquid, heck they may eventually cut out my esophagus and pull my stomach up like a pair of pants to do the esophagus' job.

 

Go back to the picture above.... wah. PAIN. ugh. I need to start two blogs I guess.

(collider.com when Mr. Pi and Richard are in storm at sea and he's mad or something.)

 

Either way, I am back to talk with you, arms propped up rather than in a bathtub helping them release
their death grip. Oh, I can't forget the soft quilt under my chin....... who has to do that?

*******

(wallpaperswide.com)

 

But you gotta keep moving or you could be a step away from the nursing home.

 

Or becoming obese.

 

Yup. No exercise and too many treats and you could be Type II diabetes material or packing a trunk on your stomach. And they are heavy. And don't look half as cool as the ones made at aXe Co. (BestMadeCo. com)

(Courtesty of Best Made Co. - Paertnered with Gershner & Sons, this is actually a tool chest but it could second as a "trunk." It is sold out. Which will save you 1200. I don't know how much I am selling mine for... stay tuned! Check out Best Made. They made J's Ax and camping trips are waayyy more fun with an ax. Plus you get First Aid opportunities when they sink the sharp blade into their mosquito laden leg!)



-Here is some more research info that could or could not be used to help humans stay out of nursing homes, maybe get into shape with their research or at least be mildly entertaining to read:

'Laminitis is initiated by inflammation, progresses into severe inflammatory pain, and then into a chronic or neuropathic pain condition that leads to tissue destruction and often causes severe high blood pressure. (This should sound familiar to the Cushings crowd. And the Crohns crowd has heard the inflammation song more times than Disney plays It's A Small World After All.)

 



 



(Disney.wikia.com- The place they play the song over and over. Never been. If I do I am going when Zimmerman goes and rents it just for him so I don't have to wait in line and bringing a commode from Sportsman's Warehouse. )

“In the United States, it is estimated that laminitis will strike 15 percent of horses during their lifetimes, and 75 percent of horses with laminitis will lose their lives,” said Guedes."
Readers! Poor Hula was one day away from going to Horse Heaven when a vet, Mr. Hammock





(photo courtesy of Hammock’s research interests range across omics platform development, pest control, and drug development. He has been honored for his teaching and mentoring, as well as for his groundbreaking scientific research. (Photo courtesy of Bruce Hammock)


"Dear Bruce,

Please send me whatever it is you gave Hula- I have plenty of experience swallowing horse pills. Just send the compound or a chemistry intern from your lab. Please. I'm desperate.

So Glad for Horses,

Amanda

P.S. How did she open her pill bottle and what size were her horse pills? The same as our horse pills? Or bigger cause she is a horse?

When Bruce asked if he could have HULAand try some compound on her they said okay and somehow a horse trailer and some horse people put the horse in the would have been horse hearse and went to the vet.



(Rockwellprints.org: Waiting for the Vet. Poor pet. Poor Kid. Remember this is how Rockwell WISHED things were. The other dogs and owners would be barking if he painted it in real life.)

I guess within 3 hours of receiving this compound, Hula was up on her feet! I don't know if she got up to go to the bathroom or get a drink of water but within a year she was walking around the horse compound. Look at her below.  Small area to walk in but believe me, walking across the street is tough and she doesn't have her cane or walking stick for balance.

I wonder if she remembers any of what she went through-how she was on the brink of euthanasia,  unable to stand, and had a high pain level past a 10. Or was she thinking: I am in horse heaven almost.... I can't wait to meet....... that one horse who won and then hurt himself and they killed him...." thank you google for helping me locate that horse.

Barbaro

Barbaro:April 29, 2003 – January 29, 2007 was an American thoroughbred racehorse who won the 2006 Kentucky Derby,

*

*

(partyideapros.com has some hats that may have been worn when Barbaro raced! Thanks, horse racing hat maker people! I'm sure it helps the horses.)

*

but shattered his leg two weeks later in the 2006 Preakness Stakes, ending his racing career and eventually leading to his death)

 

How do they find that out with a horse?( The pain level, not if it was dreaming of Horse Heaven and what horses it would get to play with)

 Is it based on asking the horse: "On a scale of 1-10 what is your pain level?" That will be a google question I google.

okay. googled.

They take the blood pressure. Which is high in horses with this terrible disease and equals our equivalent of a "TEN".

(photo courtesy of the mashable.com)

 







The article stated that the front limbs of the horse or dog get really weak. WOW. I have more in common with these animals. Or they share some common problems that we humans have with Cushings Disease. Either way,

 

me and 'Hula' both share front arm wimpy-ness!

(I wonder if her owner was from Hawaii? If so, neat. I went once. It rained almost the entire time.)

In fact, as I type this, I am using my pillows to prop my arms up, and I am stretching around my trunk, or is it the fat pads under my arm pits, to type on my computer.

I must be so obtusely obese or not used to big bust age, that I can't reach.
I want to grab some of that Rock Tape and make it easier to type if you know what I mean.
Don't share this idea with Victoria Secret. I don't want them making bras for Cushings people that address the fact their bust is now what looks like a device for saving people at sea.





(ru.renderstuff.com- bet this place never thought they'd be on my blog.....!)

 I am bloated enough that I look like those sumo wrestler suits that you can't put your arms together to say a prayer before you are rolled onto the grass and in front of your graduating class.

Try typing the 13 inch lap top, with a towel rolled under your chin so you can breathe, Reader.

A Beach Towel.

Not kidding on this one. It happens to be a high quality,

turquoise and lime striped towel

wedding gift.



(Tiny Tropical star. Etsy shop: Piggy & Dirt)

It's lasted this long. Honeymoon, Divorce, Disease, and now at Padres. Didn't think I would be using a beach towel for two for just myself now that I am beyond the 3xers.

I don't know if Hula had to do this because they have longer necks and weren't given laptops to pass the time away while their muscles wasted but I sure have had a hard time lining up my neck so I can get air to my lungs.
 

The best position is the one that the baby birds nested in the clematis this spring

(I have never planted a bright clematis in the dirt. But Kurt & Rebecca have and they sell them on a little etsy shop called Piggy& Dirt. Little kid couldn't say their name right. So Piggy is Becky and Kurt is, well, Dirt.)

outside my window use; neck back and everything lined up to the spine.


(Kurt and his Tiny Tropical can help you remember that life is a tiny beach...if you go to his shopon esty: Piggy&Dirt)

 Stay tuned for the second part of a series of posts that was actually one post but became very very long. So unless you like A Hogwart's Marathon I am going to give us all a break and not talk about mascots, obesity, and fun facts for a few days.
Of course while you rest and take bathroom breaks I will be feverishly (it is incredibly muggy in Idaho and Padre has a bum arm so we have to wait for Bro/1/:

"THE TORMENT " go bring his radically fit body over to help Padre put in the air conditioner.
Bro, can you please come put the air conditioners in? It is sweltering. You could show L & L
(his offspring) how strong you are.

love, and to be continued in a series because you wouldn't believe how much I can say about waist lines, waiting in line, writing line upon line.
So just you wait!

Make that a wrap, Reader!

Truly Yours,

Amanda