#Cushing By Kristi Kirstein

My name is Kristi Kirstein and I’m a 21 year old student at NWU.

At the age of 13 I started gaining weight uncontrollably. I was active and I ate healthy and we couldn’t understand why I kept on gaining so much weight. My Thyroid function was perfect and I was not insulin resistant. We went from Doctor to Doctor and we received the same diagnosis “You eat to much!” And “Your parents are big so you are too!”. After seeing nearly 4 Doctors my mother told our GP to test all of my hormones.

The tests came back and she could see that my Cortisol levels were very high. She referred me to a physician and just by looking at me for 5 seconds he diagnosed me with #CushingSyndrome. I had every single symptom possible. I had my tumor removed by Dr. Slabbert in 2011 at the age of 15. I lost some weight after removing my tumor but getting toned is a real struggle. Till this day I still have side effects of Cushing’s Syndrome even though the tumor was removed 6 years ago