October 2013 - What is the Pituitary anyway

So, another week has flown by. It was another week of good health and fitness progress so that's certainly a good point. I was thinking about this blogging lark, having never done it before until this Pituitary thing came along, what do I do if nothing much is happening? Do I just wait until there is something happening and therefore I have something to say, or do I put some effort into thinking about what the content is going to be. Well for the moment the answer is "put some effort in"....I've got this far after all.

Something that has constantly occurred to me is how little people know about the Pituitary gland - and until February 2013 that applied to me too. Since I've was diagnosed, I have put a lot of research into what this little gland is all about and what effects it might have on me. But when people realise I have been ill and you tell them "I've had a tumour on my Pituitary gland" you can see the look in their eyes that says 'well I've heard of the Pituitary gland, but I'm not sure where it is and what it does'. Of course that is fine, it must be the same for all sorts of conditions, you don't need to know how part of your body works and it is only when it stops working you start to get involved. But for charities like the Pituitary Foundation it must be really hard getting your message across about a subject that isn't really known about. Having done some more reading on the subject, there seem to be so many variable outcomes of what you may have wrong with you depending on so many different factors. I managed to get to the ripe old age of 52 before having a Pituitary problem (diagnosed) but a lot of people suffer all their lives with symptoms. Nightmare.

I went around a friends house to watch Star Trek Into the Darkness in his cinema room. Nothing unusual in that you might think, indeed I have been round and seen many movies in that same room. However, this one brought back a few memories. I saw Into the Darkness at the cinema on Tuesday 18th June, this was the same week I went back into hospital for the second time. When I came out of the cinema I started leaking yellow fluid out of my nose, which I was worried was Cerebral Spinal Fluid (CSF).....as it happens it wasn't but it was the start of the infections which put me back in hospital. It was good to see the film again in much better circumstances, and it is such an epic film. I am not a major Trekkie, but I do like a good science fiction film, and this was was very good indeed, excellent special effects.

Last November I took part in 'Movember', which most of you will know by now is the event where men grow a moustache for November. This time last year I was blissfully unaware of my tumour, but it was most likely having a silent effect on my ability to grow a decent 'tache. I had a decent moustache for many years although I shaved it off 10 years ago or more. So I had no reason to believe growing one back wasn't going to be a piece of cake. So I signed up for the Royal Mail Movember challenge and let my facial hair do its thing. Except it didn't do it very well. My lack of hormones meant my facial hair was less than satisfactory....so why not give it another go this year. Well for one thing I'm not sure the moustache will be any better this year, and for another I think it must be someone else's turn to rattle the charity tin. Maybe by next year, my facial hair growing prowess will have returned....after all as I reported last time, my leg hair is growing so why not facial hair!! Unfortunately for me there's no such thing as Legvember though :-)