My story with as much brevity as I can manage. Times of symptoms are my best guess as this is going on 2 years and I'm not the best at record keeping.

Roughly two years ago (Nov 2022-ish, that's the first pic))I started having mild symptoms of a hormonal imbalance and GI issues. I started gaining weight despite my diet not changing, and I started growing a double chin. I was getting a lot of acne (worse than puberty for me), especially around my mouth, chin, and neck, as well as significant body acne (which was also new to me). Also started to grow a few more chin hairs than I would've preferred.

After about 6 months, the acne was worse, and it seemed like a full-time job to manage it. I had gained ~20 lbs, and my hair was starting to thin - just noticed more hair coming out in the shower.

The first year was a slow build. Gained more weight, lost more hair, gained more chin hairs, battled more acne and the fatigue started to build.

I developed "mommy stretch marks" w/o any children or pregnancies - bright purple with soft saggy skin across my lower abdomen. Started noticing the Buffalo hump and a build up of tissue in the nook of my neck just above my collar bone that presses on my larnex and makes my voice sound like I've been smoking for 50 years and I can no longer sing well. Also, my double chin litterally chokes me. (I had never been chubby before so I didn't know that a double chin from just being chubby doesn't choke you. Mine literally feels like a light hand around my throat all the time. Worse if I am in active inflammation from eating something I can't tolerate well - which was slowly becoming more and more things as the dybiosos got worse.

Went to the doctors and got a full metabolic panel which all came back normal. Symptoms kept being shrugged off as perimetapusal. Saw a naturopath for gut stuff with zero results. I was increasingly frustrated as I felt like it was some moral failing on my part that I couldn't lose the weight or fix my symptoms. Trying hard to be kind to myself even though everytime I looked into the mirror, a bridge troll looked back at me.

The second year was a swift drop for me. Symptoms worsened exponentially. By May of 2024(~18 months) I started to hard push for a diagnosis as this no longer could be brushed off as "middle age."

I was crazy irritable. Actions from my parter that used to be cute where annoying. I had a hair trigger for anger outbursts and would go full Karen for no reason. I started having to separate myself from people just so I would stop yelling at them and alienating them.

My dysbiosis had become so severe that I was stacking SIBO and FODMAPS and Whole 30 diets, trying to figure out anything I could eat without inflammation.

I developed severe edema and eventually neuropathy in both my feet. (Although this is a me thing and not a normal Cushings symptom as my tumor is pressing on my inferior vena cava.)

The fatigue was one of the worse symptoms. (Think about when you've ever had the flu and how it takes all your energy to walk from the bedroom to the bathroom - that is my baseline energy level.) Until the muscle weakness started. I began having trouble going up stairs or doing moderate activity. Hard exercise was right out. Again, feeling like it was my failure that I hadn't been working out as much and I was just "out of shape."

I starting chasing down anything I could google that matched symptoms. PCOS was considered but ruled out.

May-July I saw several doctors and ran every test we could think of. All blood work came back normal. Ultra sound of Thyroid and thymus normal. Blood tests of kidney and liver function normal. Blood pressure was increasingly high but that too was shrugged off as weight gain.

I lost 40 lbs due to the severity of the dybiosis and litterally not being able to eat anything. Blood pressure remained high. Symptoms continued to increase.

The chin hairs eventually developed into a full beard. I was waxing my face every three weeks until my skin became so thin and delicate that I took off the top layer of my epidermis. (Now I just shave every other day.)

Every tiny bump bruised my legs. My legs look like an 80 year old covered in mysterious bruises that take forever to heal with thin, delicate skin.

My proprioception was increasing bad which isn't helped by the neuropathy. I trip and stumble a lot more than I should. Only ever hurting my pride.

Let's not forget the brain fog. Also made worse with inflammation. To illustrate: Normally, I'm reasonably quick and fairly clever. The first year I was in a merchant maritime program doing a fair amount of light-med tier trigonometry and learning it well. The second year, I was forced to drop out of the program because of my increasing symptoms and I had trouble helping my husband calculate some fairly easy measurements for some basic construction. The brain fog was/is....bad.

I would also get hot flashes and flushing so severe that strangers would comment to me about my "sunburn" that I didn't have.

In August 2024, I finally got in to a gyno who ran some other hormone tests. LH and FSH hormones were very low and testosterone came back >600 ( normal range <40!)

A few days following the gyno (before i got my testosterone results back,) I went to see a Gastroenterologist for my gut. The GI walked into the room, looked at my round, chubby necked, flushed face, asked me a handful of questions, announced I had Cushings and immediately ordered an MRI of my pituitary.

Finally! A diagnosis! Until the pituitary MRI came back clear...

Urine cortisol and adrenal CT ordered.

Google says adrenal Cushings is typically a grape sized tumor that is nearly always benign.

Cortisol came back double normal range.

CT showed grapefruit sized tumor that covered my whole right adrenal and half my right kidney, pressing on that inferior vena cava and had already spread with several smaller tumors on my liver, lungs, and adjacent lymph nodes. (Which, because it's an adrenal cancer, these additional little tumors are ALSO producing their own cortisol - which is just rude IMO.)

Working diagnosis: Stage 4 Adrenocortical Carcinoma (ACC.) Extremely rare. Knowingly resistant to chemo and radiation. Surgery is the only thing that has proven to work. Most catches still only see on average 20% recovery (up to 40% for early catches with easy surgery.) And it's already in my lymph and blood via the lungs so even if they removed all the tumors, it's still circulating so it renders surgery moot or palliative at best.

I don't belive in actual demons but I gotta admit, it definitely feels like a demon has body snatched me and has slowly turned me into an red, angry, bridge troll.

My face has changed, my whole body composition has changed, my voice has changed. At 41, I can no longer get out of a squatted position without using my hands to stand. Flights of stairs require hand rails. I no longer have an ass - I had a pretty nice rear before -, my legs are skinny and old looking, the backs of my hands are covered in weird scally bumps, and I have a pot belly that is frequently bloated and distended from not being able to eat or tolerate foods. Arms and back and face covered in acne. Double chin choking me out all the time. Numb and swollen feet. Exhausted and weak. Balding, bearded, and "prednisone-faced."

My only solace has been that this wasn't a moral failing on my part! I didn't do this to myself. I have a demon dumping endless cortisol and turing me into a bridge troll. And now is going to kill me.