Courageous in Cortisol – a Column by Brandy Moody

The Letter to Myself I Needed to Write

Dear Me, I know what you’re thinking. There’s a desperate voice in your head begging for your body to return to the way it was before this disease. There are spiraling questions that seem to lead to no answers: “Why can’t I lose weight?” “What am I doing wrong?”…

Let’s Talk College and Cushing’s Disease

College is stressful, but adding a chronic disease to the mix can make taking classes even harder. I didn’t realize it at the time, but at some point during my interpreter training program for English and American Sign Language, from 2017 to 2019, a pituitary tumor caused me to…

Learning to Accept My Body

Have you ever wanted to just tear all the fat off your body? Have you grown tired of the weight it bears on your self-esteem, and how every day it becomes harder to lift a foot and plant it in front of the other? What about being so frustrated from…

Brain Surgery: The Second Time’s a Charm

The crisp morning felt surreal. Whimsical frost on leaves outside my window reminded me that life has its seasons. Some seasons we succumb to struggles that we think hold us back, and other seasons we live in celebrations of triumph, with knowledge that there is sunshine after rain. It was…

Fighting for My Cushing’s Diagnosis

You can tell a lot about a person within the first seven seconds of meeting them. I am a Cushing’s disease warrior. Whew, now that that’s out of the way, allow me to delve deeper into what it means to be a warrior of this disease. I’ve carried 179 pounds…