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Lately, I’ve been dealing with this awful dryness down there... It’s constant discomfort, and then I deal with infections right after sex. Everything seems clean, though. I'm 46.
It honestly feels like my expiration date is approaching...
How do you actually fight the dryness, and is sex just becoming an impossible mission? Everyone keeps telling me to just use lubricants, but that doesn't touch the actual issue of being dry from the inside out.
James Harris9 said:Look... after the surgery, the doctor told me the tumor was massive and
they couldn't actually find the pituitary gland, but they managed to peel it away successfully, which I guess means
they got it out without much trouble. He said the tumor basically ate or pushed the pituitary somewhere else
but they didn't see it anywhere. Anyway, about 20 days after the procedure, I went in for
blood work and hormone levels. Blood looks totally fine, and honestly, all my hormones are surprisingly good.
My blood sugar dropped, my hypertension is completely gone, and even my lipid panel shows great results. GH went up, testosterone too, and everything else is right within the normal range. Cortisol plummeted from 1500 down to 60. Only prolactin is still a little elevated, and ACTH was found and dropped from 120 to 20. This probably means there's still some pituitary tissue left somewhere. My sleep is better, feeling stronger, just okay... Haven't done the osteoporosis test yet. My hunger cues are back, so at least now I know when I'm actually hungry. The only thing I'm taking is hydrocortisone, and I'm already on
a tapering dose. I have another hormone check coming up soon and
an MRI of the pituitary in April to see what's really going on in there...
How long has it been since you started lowering the hydrocortisone, and what dose are you on now?
A few months back, I had surgery to remove a pituitary macroadenoma. Now I’m stuck on a 30 mg daily dose of Cortez because my cortisol levels bottomed out. From what I understand, that 1.5 cm tumor was sitting right on the left lobe of my pituitary gland. Before all this, I wasn't on any kind of hormone replacement... everything seemed perfectly fine. All I have to go on are the labs taken immediately after the procedure, since I haven't had any follow-up testing since then. Here they are:
8 AM cortisol: 252
4 PM cortisol: 104
For anyone else here who ended up on this medication... please, tell me your stories. How long does this last? If I'm looking at a lifelong prescription, can I at least hope to taper down from this massive dose eventually? Also, a bit of a side thought... right after surgery, they had me collecting urine in a plastic container for 24 hours, but the hospital staff didn't actually collect the sample until four days later. Can those results even be trusted?