Cushing’s Awareness Day – Things I Learned from Cushing’s

a tale of two tumors

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Today is Cushing’s Awareness Day – the birthday of Dr. Harvey Williams Cushing.  I am going to use this famous quote by Dr. Cushing as the inspiration for my post today and talk about what I learned from the experience of getting Cushing’s, in random order.

1.  Patients are smarter, more educated, and might play a bigger role in your survival than you can imagine is possible.

3.  Rare endocrine diseases, like Cushing’s, are hard to figure out.  The tumors can be hard to see and hard to catch in action.  The symptoms are vague and strange.  Diagnosis is only quick and easy for the very lucky and for the very unlucky who suffered for years before finding help.  If you are reading these kind of blogs, you probably don’t fall into the former group.

4.  Because rare endocrine diseases are hard to figure out, if YOU suspect you have Cushing’s it is…

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The Voices of Cushing’s Disease, Part III: Finding Strength in Numbers

Part III of The Voices of Cushing’s Disease video series discusses the importance of support for people living with Cushing’s disease.

 

Day Eight, Cushing’s Awareness Challenge 2015

It’s Here!

 

Dr. Cushing was born in Cleveland Ohio. The fourth generation in his family to become a physician, he showed great promise at Harvard Medical School and in his residency at Johns Hopkins Hospital (1896 to 1900), where he learned cerebral surgery under William S. Halsted

After studying a year in Europe, he introduced the blood pressure sphygmomanometer to the U.S.A. He began a surgical practice in Baltimore while teaching at Johns Hopkins Hospital (1901 to 1911), and gained a national reputation for operations such as the removal of brain tumors. From 1912 until 1932 he was a professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School and surgeon in chief at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston, with time off during World War I to perform surgery for the U.S. forces in France; out of this experience came his major paper on wartime brain injuries (1918). In addition to his pioneering work in performing and teaching brain surgery, he was the reigning expert on the pituitary gland since his 1912 publication on the subject; later he discovered the condition of the pituitary now known as “Cushing’s disease“.

Read more about Dr. Cushing

Today, April 8th, is Cushing’s Awareness Day. Please wear your Cushing’s ribbons, t-shirts, awareness bracelets or Cushing’s colors (blue and yellow) and hand out Robin’s wonderful Awareness Cards to get a discussion going with anyone who will listen.

And don’t just raise awareness on April 8.  Any day is a good day to raise awareness.

 

 

MaryO

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