Cushings Help

Mary O'Connor  //  Cushing's and kidney cancer (renal cell carcinoma) patient, founder, owner and webmaster of Cushing's Help and Support, web designer, piano teacher and mom.

I am a Cushing's patient who has dealt with Cushing's symptoms since 1983 (or earlier) and the aftereffects of pituitary surgery since 1987.

Because I had very little support for my symptoms, diagnosis and surgery, I decided to try to make things a little better for other patients and started a support site called Cushing's Help and Support in 2000. The site has grown to astronomical numbers. This disease isn't as rare as doctors have told us!

In 2006, I was also diagnosed with kidney cancer (renal cell carcinoma). My left kidney and adrenal gland were removed. Having an adrenal gland removed complicates my post-Cushing's symptoms.

I am not planning to have any more rare and unusual diseases.

My entire bio to date can be found here: http://www.cushings-help.com/maryos_story.htm

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Oct 27 / 9:30pm

40 Days of Thankfulness: Day Fourteen

Thankful-always

Today, and every day, I am thankful for coffee.  Without it, I would have a daily headache and I'd have even less energy than I have now.

I first started drinking coffee when I had my first job as a waitress at a Hayes-Bickford in Boston, MA.  This was a summer job.  A bunch of my college friends had gotten an apartment near Fenway Park in Boston and most of us were waitresses in various places.  Hayes-Bickford was marginally better than a dive. 

Hayes
I was fortunate that I was the youngest waitress at that Hayes-Bickford, so I got the best tips. This was a l-o-n-g time ago - I'd get out of work sometime after midnight, take the Boston subway alone to our apartment, with an apron full of my tips, mostly in jangly change.  That could never happen any more!  Even without the money, I still wouldn't wander around the Boston Common area of Boston alone after midnight.

The food at HB wasn't so great.  Sometimes, a patron would order some type of meat and the chef would say we were out of it, to put gravy on whatever-we-had and tell the diner that it was what he had ordered.  We were usually out of a lot of things.

But the coffee was good and I learned to drink it, lots of it, and black, something I still do today.  If I could do the IV thing, I would!

Coffee

Filed under  //  40 Days   MaryO   Thankfulness   coffee  

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