#prolactinoma

[millipedesonthebrain]

I have to find joy in life so I named my brain tumor Reginald

[lambsearandlavender]

I'm so fucking devastated and angry and scared. I worked my ass off over 2 years of emdr, I went through the period that it gave me near-daily seizures before it got better, and when I was having one only every 4-8 weeks I took a break for a year. I was thinking this summer that I had some things I wanted to work on in emdr again, but I've also been trying to get pregnant since January and been pretty focused on that. I finally just got appointments made about looking into my fertility bc I should've been pregnant by now, which is already sad, but work has been stressing me out and I had about a seizure every week for like 6 weeks and I've been white-knuckling it.

The thing is, I'm now having them daily again, causing my mental health to also tank, and it's interfering with my job which is causing the stress that's probably triggering the seizures in the first place.

But one probable culprit of my infertility is a brain tumor that screws with my hormones, and my neuro wants to put me on a medication to shrink it, but that medication is known for causing severe depression. I surely can't do emdr while I'm on that medication and I'm not sure my job will keep me if my mental health impacts my attendance much more.

But since the seizures have become so out of control, I'm probably just going to have to put fertility stuff on pause indefinitely until they're under control again and... I'm just fucking devastated. I'm having a really hard time accepting it.

[lady-spacesis]

Kind of just a vent post as I try to fall asleep.

Feel free to completely ignore this, I'm honestly not even confident that it's going to make any sense. I just need to sort out my thoughts somewhere my family isn't going to see them and become concerned.

I haven't taken my meds in two weeks while visiting with a friend and other than feeling a little overtired, I genuinely have not been having the emotional problems I have when I'm at home.

This makes me feel like maybe it isn't my emotions that are the issue, but my family's constant need to invalidate my feelings.

Almost every time I have had a poor mental health moment, it's because I tried to communicate how I feel to a family member, and they responded by belittling, invalidating, or gaslighting me.

I live with my grandparents, my mother, and my uncle and I don't have a bedroom door, I've been told for two years that they have one, they just need to put it in the frame.

I once tried to vacuume the living room when I was a teenager and before I could UNSPOOL the cord to plug it in, my mother grabs it from me, exclaims that I'm doing it wrong, and decides that she's just going to do it instead.

My mother bought three $200 carpets with my money on the month of my birthday and gets angry when I continue to ask for the money back.

My grandfather owed me $80 for two survival flashlights, and when I asked to have it so I could have some money when I visited a friend (still broke from the carpets) my grandmother told him to only give me $20 "so I wouldn't spend it all" as if I was the reason I had no money.

I went to the hospital for a stomach issue that my family kept feeding me laxatives to fix and my mother and grandmother walked into the waiting room to yell about how I was going to embarrass myself, then left.

A year later- I'm scheduled for a double endoscopy for the SAME issue and am drinking water the day before as I was instructed. But because I wasn't chugging 4 ounces of water all at once, they threatened to cancel my appointment.

I chugged a half an ounce of water in 10 minutes and went to my family and sassily tossed the empty water bottle on the floor to show them that I did drink it.

Was it mature? No? Did my grandmother need to call me a little bitch, chase me, scream at me, and smack me for just repeating "I drank the water" instead of yelling back at her?

Did my mom need to grab a fistful of my hair while shoving the empty bottle in my face and asking if I wanted to eat it?

I don't really feel like it.

And then, after I say that pulling my hair was wrong, I'm told by my grandmother "she didn't pull your hair, she put her hand on your head to calm you down and her fingers got tangled"

Ok, my hair isn't a rats nest and no one says "do you want to eat this fucking bottle?" To someone they are trying to calm down.

The next day, they found 2 polyps in my stomach and the doctor claimed that they usually don't occur in 26 year olds.

I also have a prolactinoma (a non cancerous brain tumor that effects hormones)

But because I'm taking cabergoline to surpress how much prolactin it produces, whenever I bring up that I have a tumor, my grandmother responds with "it's probably gone by now"

I am not allowed to feel any way about anything and I'm almost positive that my "irrational mood swings" are just me getting really fed up with having no one on my side about literally anything I'm going through.

And there's this part of me that is second guessing everything I just said and wondering if maybe I really am just irrationally emotional about things I should just let go of.

I'm so frigging confused.

[calscreating]

having a brain tumor feels so isolating. like i could handle all of the shit in my life but the tumor is this overwhelming weight that just makes everything feel so much harder.

[beautifullychaoticworld-blog]

I have 2 years left off my tumor treatment. I actually no longer have a visible tumor on my MRI scans and my blood tests are all good and my hormone levels are in the norm. I just need to lose a bit of weight again to look more healthy...

[thatturtlething]

there’s this one nurse here who regularly acknowledges i’m having a hard time, and i swear he’s some kind of emotional wizard. the whole day i’ll be like “i’m doing well, i’m fine, i’m healthy!” because i actually feel that way? a lot of people here have gone through much more dangerous operations with way worse diagnoses, so i feel like i’m the spring chicken of the ward. but while giving me my meds this evening, he said “you know, it’s a tough operation. you don’t think it is, because it doesn’t leave a visible scar. but it messes with you”

and i didn’t know i needed to hear that, but i really did.

[rebeccabroeseker]

[beautifullychaoticworld-blog]

I find it astonishing that researchers haven't found what causes pituitary tumors, prolactinomas in particular... would be amazing if they did more research on this... they told me it's from too much stress but our whole lives are full of stress unless you decide to do nothing with your life at all...