I was 30 and returning from working as a nurse at Cairns Base Hospital in north Queensland, embarking on a four month overland trek back to U.K., through countries that would be difficult to venture in current times.
My periods stopped and I leaked breast milk! What was going on?? I put it down to the disruption of travel and left things until I restarted work at my training hospital, Charing Cross in London. On referral to a brilliant endocrinologist, I was quickly diagnosed as having a prolactinoma and put on Bromocriptine tablets, which quickly resolved the problem.
Five years later, I married Bob and went on to have one child, who was born a week before my 41st birthday – brilliant pregnancy and delivery. The only problem being that I was hopeless at breast feeding. Only recently, I read in either Pituitary Life or the London group Newsletter, that breast feeding is difficult following a prolactinoma…wish I’d known that 27 years ago!!
Ten years after marrying Bob, he was diagnosed as having acromegaly, as does his maternal aunt. The marvellous endocrine team at Addenbrookes Hospital, Cambridge quickly removed it, with no problems since and he is monitored with medication reviewed regularly. The annual brain scans also revealed another benign brain tumour which was removed some years later, this time leaving a large scar, but Bob quips…”No worse than I’d get on a lively night out in Liverpool!” (His home town!)
Our daughter manned the Pituitary Helpline whilst she was a medical student in London and is now qualified as a junior doctor….Which was her first ward? Well endocrine of course!
I hope this gives encouragement to recently diagnosed pituitary patients, it’s not all ‘doom ‘n gloom’!!