Brain Surgery?

As it turns out, I don't get to be a Liberty Belle anymore. At least not this semester. We decided that with the medical problems I am facing, it would be better for me to stay at home. It's been a bad week. I don't mind staying home for a semester and taking classes online. I'll get to be with my family, and maybe get a job. I have a few friends from highschool who are still here, and I'll get to see the others when they come home for the weekend. (more often than I got to see them before!)

What I am worried about is what I will be going through in the next month or so. You see, there is a gland behind your nose, right up against your brain, called the Pituitary gland. (And I hate the word pituitary more than I have ever hated a word in my life.) This gland is the size of a bean, but it controls so many other parts of your body: the thyroid, the adrenal glands, the ovaries, growth hormones, and kidneys. And mine doesn't work. Earlier this week we went to the University of Virginia, and I saw the best endocrinologists (gland doctors) in the country. They looked at my MRI and said that they had never seen anything like it. Blood is only getting to the outer edge of my pituitary gland, which means that there is probably something inside it. They don't know what. It might be a tumor or a cyst. Right now I'm on replacement hormones, since so many things in my body are shut down, and I'm feeling fine. But since the doctors don't know what's wrong with me, they want to do a biopsy.

This is what the biopsy entails: A neurosurgeon would go in through my nasal cavity, all the way to my brain, and take out a piece of this gland. I'll feel like I've been punched in the nose, for an entire week. There is a three week recovery time. I'll have nose bleeds, and nausea. I might get a sinus infection, which causes headaches. There is a very small chance that I could lose my eyesight or have a stroke.

On the other hand, if my blood work comes back suggesting that the gland is inflamed, I will have to take very strong steroids for a month. They'll cause me to gain weight and swell up, and there is a possibility that I won't want to leave the house.

I don't really know what to hope for. When my mom gets home today at three, she will call the doctor and find out which route they suggest. As for me, I'm happy taking the replacement hormones for the rest of my life. It really doesn't bother me. In fact, there is an 80% chance that I will have the surgery and STILL have to take them.

Stupid pituitary gland.