Let's Talk About...My Health Condition.

You see, when I was 15, my body started doing things it hadn’t before. No, not my period, that was actually 2 years earlier. This was something else. For whatever the reason, I didn’t bring it up to my mother when it first started because I just assumed all girls went through this. Albeit strange for my age, I knew it’s what girls [biologically] do, so I figured it was some version of normal.

Tired of guessing?

L A C T A T I N G.

Yea, at 15, I started lactating.

I was still getting my regular cycle, I still had energy to hang out with friends, my appetite didn’t change. To be honest, aside from my juicy little secret, I was as normal as a teenage girl could be. It wasn’t until about 20-21 years of age when things started to change, again. I started noticing a gap between periods. I would be 3-4 weeks late, which I always associated with stress, it wasn’t until I was 3 months late, and some of my ‘milk’-stained shirts surfaced from the laundry, that I finally spilled to my mom what was going on, and we agreed, maybe this is something to look into now.

After a series of blood tests and exams, I did a little research on my own based on my symptoms, a suicide mission right? I mean quite literally I was going to come across at least ONE article telling me it was cancer and that I’m dying right? Actually, ask any other woman on the planet and you’ll find that common symptoms usually mean 1 of 2 things: either she has some rare disease that could kill her, or she’s pregnant. Our bodies are funny like that. I assumed to be the latter considering everything else was fine. And despite having protected sex, my hispanic mother did her hispanic magic trick where I thought even if a boy and I sat on opposite ends of a couch I could still get pregnant.

But then I came across something else, something a little more, likely. It was a condition that was actually pretty common. Add together lactation, irregular periods, migraines, weight gain, immense fatigue and you might get, Prolactinoma. A small benign[:non-cancerous] tumor sitting on the pituitary gland. This gland is located on the brain between the eyes. Call it a hunch, discernment, supernatural wisdom but I was so confident that this is what I had. It was about a month later I had my first appointment with a Yale endocrinologist after my prolactin levels came back sky high.

[ Prolactin: a hormone released from the anterior pituitary gland that stimulates milk production after childbirth. Prolactin contributes to hundreds of physiologic functions, but the two primary responsibilities are milk production and development of mammary glands within breast tissues. Prolactin promotes the growth of mammary alveoli, which are the components of the mammary gland, where the actual production of milk occurs. ]

This is where I’ll accept my WebMD award and PhD doctoral certificate, because a long story short- I was right! It only took one MRI to locate the tumor and gratefully so in my case, it was the “average” size as far as pituitary tumors go. It was small enough I didn’t need surgery, it was large enough I needed treatment. I started on Cabergoline, the go-to of pituitary tumor treatments, which is supposed to shrink the tumor until it basically dissolves. There’s of course a chance it comes back, there’s a chance it doesn’t. You can imagine, this is something patients can expect to have to monitor for the remainder of their life. I believe they give it two years. If after two years of clear MRI scans, they deem it cured. I admit haven’t dug deep enough to know the tail end of all this.

So I start on Cabergoline. Works like a charm. My cycle is back to it’s regular programming, my skin is even flourishing, and hallelujah, I’m even losing weight. Fast forward a bit, it’s been about 4 or 5 years, the tumor is still living rent free in my brain but it’s gotten smaller. Then, this amazing thing happens in every young, American, adult’s life, a rite of passage if you will, an initiation into adulthood...if you don’t have health coverage by your employer of course. Yea, I turned 26 and was kicked off my mom’s insurance. It was like the insurance companies had their own little birthday party countdown waiting for my birthday. They wasted no time in sending her the letter that I was no longer eligible for coverage. I wasn’t working a job that offered healthcare, and I wasn’t making nearly enough money to pay for any private insurance.

Bye bye Cabergoline and consequently, normalcy.

My periods stopped coming...and I mean they didn’t take holidays, they relocated every season to their summer home. I would get my period maybe once a year. To this day, the longest standing reign was 20 months, no flow. It is indeed as bad as it sounds. I’ve gained an ungodly amount of weight since 26. I can sleep for 10-15 hours. Oh and migraines? I’ve been hospitalized twice from a few episodes. I’ve had to call out of work, I’ve stayed in bed for days. My longest migraine lasted 3 weeks, and that’s with no breaks. Yea.

It seems like each symptom affects the next, no normal hormone levels, no period- no period, weight gain and migraines, stress on the body, more weight gain and migraines, more prolonged periods- you get the picture. Strangely, what started all this, my lactating, has actually stopped. Working out, though seemingly tedious, actually helps provoke my period to come more frequently. I’ve had it twice already in the last 6 months, that’s improvement. I did have my last migraine episode about 3 months ago, but thanks to my amazing husband, our diet has changed a bit and we try not to provoke angry migraine triggers to target my head. Until my old friend Caby and I reunite, this is working and I’m grateful.

Kind of- more on that in a later blog...