Thanks for your helpful reply. It's great to have "friends" out there, even when you cannot see them! I especially appreciate hearing about other people's symptoms so I can compare mine to them. We are so sick that I sometimes wonder how we keep on keeping on, esp. with the wonderful docs we find! To answer your questions: I believe the lab drew four vials of blood, maybe five, but definitely not more than that. The tech also mentioned freezing two of them. I asked for a copy of the lab sheet the doc sent with me to the lab for my files, but she told me I did not need one and refused to make a copy for me. So I have no way of checking now to see what lab work is being done. I do remember seeing Complete Metabolic Panel checked, but I don't know if there were others selected too. I really got the impression this endo did not have a clue. He said it was very "inconvenient" for him that I do not have insurance. He said he would like to put me in the hospital for four days to try to figure out what is wrong with me. I asked him for another 24 hour urine collection to compare with the one several months ago, but he refused and said there was no reason for it. He said there were "protocols that have to be followed," whatever that means. When I saw him the first time several months ago, he was dismissive. He told me he could tell just by looking at my face that I do not have Cushing's. He told me about a story that had appeared about him in the newspaper based on his having diagnosed some prominent person he did not know on the basis of how he looked when they met at a social function. Apparently he walked up to this guy and said something like, "Hi, I'm an endo, and you've got ______." Turns out the guy did. He handed me a copy of a reducing diet he published and told me to follow it and come back in two months because that was all I needed to get better. I refused to let him do that to me. I insisted that he examine me. Only when he finally gave me a sixty second exam, saw my buffalo hump, fat pads in front.......and saw that I have absolutely no striae.....did he finally agree to order the 24 hour urine collection test I had asked for. As for saliva tests, he absolutely froths at the mouth at the very mention of them. He says they are totally inaccurate, a waste of time and money, and no legit doc uses them. My family doc had done three 4 sample saliva tests for cortisol, and on the first one, the results were so high the lab could not even measure them. I gave this endo those results and he said there was an NP here in town making "a million dollars a year" doing hormone balancing based on saliva tests, and he can barely make a living. Her success really upset him. When he said I might have to pay cash for brain surgery, I asked him how much it would cost, if I had a microadenoma, and he said, "A lot." End of conversation. It is bad enough to be this sick and not have insurance, but who needs the added strain of worrying about paying cash for brain surgery. That is definitely going to help me get better! Josie | 