It is such a sad and lonely feeling. I'll be fine tomorrow, but today, it's just depressing.
Hi. About five years ago, during my second pregnancy, I started having a lot of weird GI symptoms and - very long story short - was diagnosed with chronic pancreatitis and needed to start taking enzymes with all of my meals in order to digest fat. I've never had an episode of acute pancreatitis, but imaging has shown my pancreas is severely atrophied.
Ok. Fast forward 5 years. My pancreatitis has been pretty stable and I don't always need to take enzymes. I get seen every year for my pancreatitis though, and they do imaging to monitor.
All of my MRIs since 2020 have shown an adenoma on my left adrenal gland. They never worked it up, however, until this spring. My PCP had me do the low-dose suppression test, and my cortisol came back 5.4. thinking back, I've had some things like hair loss, weight gain in my mid section, thick purple weird stretch marks on my inner thighs...all for about fifteen years now.
I'm waiting for the next steps. But I can't help wondering. The doctors at my teaching hospital have never been able to figure out why my pancreas has atrophied, or what caused all of that. I'm starting to wonder if I've had Cushings for fifteen years, and maybe my pregnancies exacerbated something.
Does anyone know of any link here? Could the cortisol/pregnancies have driven my pancreas crazy and made it start basically damaging itself?
They found a small benign adrenal adenoma on an MRI and decided to work it up. I did the suppression test this week and got the result that my cortisol was 5.4.
I am waiting to hear back from my PCP and just trying to figure out what to expect. I have some symptoms related to Cushings, but not all. I am assuming my PCP will now refer me to a ln endocrinologist and that they may want to remove the adeno.
Has anyone else had a similar experience, with the high DST result and an adenoma?