About 20% of people worldwide, or 1 out of every 5, have a brain tumor located in or affecting the pituitary gland. It sounds crazy to think of brain tumors being so common, but the pituitary gland frequently has benign tumors and since this is the “master gland” that directs all the other hormone-producing glands, a tumor or other condition here affects a person all over his or her body and in many possible ways.
Many people with this kind of tumor die of heart attack or hypothyroid disease. My mother almost died of hypothyroidism. It was discovered in time to save her and prolong her life, but the treatment was never fully successful – her condition kept getting worse despite the medication and other interventions. She spent the last ten years of her life in constant pain, discomfort, depression, malaise, and frustration with her inability to cope with everyday life. Her pituitary condition was discovered less than a year before she died of a heart attack. Everyone said she was better off – I don’t believe this is true but it illustrates how miserable she was with her condition. Her doctor for years was a heroic, do-it-all kind of woman with a full time career and a number of children, and her opinion of other people who couldn’t seem to get it all together and constantly complained of hard-to-pin-down symptoms was that they were most likely hypochondriacs. (She also failed to notice that my uncle was having a stroke – he is now paralyzed on his left side.)
When my mother finally switched to a different doctor, the first thing he did was to order a full range of blood tests and he immediately discovered that something was not right with her pituitary gland and that this was causing the worsening of her hypothyroid symptoms. He started her on new medication (and also discovered she had Lyme’s disease, which no one had noticed before.) After a few months she started to feel a bit better week by week. Alas, it was too late to save her. One night she received news that her brother had suffered a stroke and was not expected to live. A few hours later she died in her sleep.
A lot of women who have a pituitary condition or other hormonal imbalance get accused of being hypochondriacs – or lazy, or self-indulgent. Symptoms can be as “soft” as depression, lethargy, odd hair growth, headaches, and low/no libido. They can and often do end in death, to everyone’s surprise and regret. My mother dealt with undiagnosed pituitary trouble for twenty years. While no one ever directly said she was a hypochondriac (that I know of) she did get a lot of looks. People never understood why her house wasn’t perfect and some suggested she simply needed to eat and exercise better. While this would have helped, I’m sure, most women, realistically speaking, will choose to take care of their family instead of themselves if they only have the energy to do one or the other. This may be a foolish choice in the long run but sometimes family members need to give their suffering wives and mothers permission to be weak. Sometimes the mom needs to get taken care of by her family instead of the other way around.
Hormones affect both physical and psychological fitness and women who are struggling with a pituitary condition, although they often can’t name any obvious “big” life-threatening conditions, have an uphill struggle with every single thing they do, even washing dishes. The stress of living this way and feeling like a failure complicates everything, spiraling the hormonal imbalance even further, and early death is not an uncommon result. Of course this sort of thing happens to men, too, but for various lifestyle reasons it seems to be more of a challenge for women.
Endocrinology is an important branch of medicine that doesn’t get enough attention. Neuroendocrinology (the branch that deals with hormones and the brain) is very specialized and often a person’s family doctor or gynecologist won’t get around to noticing symptoms related to this branch of medicine and will never recommended this kind of care. Insurance companies are also less aware of the benefits of screening and prevention in this area than they ought to be.
Very much in agreement with your whole post. I am so sorry your mother’s condition went undiagnosed for so long.
Thanks, me too.