June 2015 - the old and new me

So what have I been up to lately, well enjoying life that's what!

I've been on a cruise to Norway and this week been on a couple of days out and I've never felt better. To illustrate a point I found a picture of me from 2008 wearing the same suit on a different cruise ship as the suit I wore last week on holiday. To set the scene, in 2008 I knew nothing of what a pituitary gland was, nothing about Cortisol and the important job it did for your body. But what I did know was that I had some funny eyesight problems, which had been investigated by an eye specialist. He had a good look at my eyes and found nothing amiss - but I know now that what I was experiencing was some early disturbance of a pituitary tumour pressing on my optic nerve.

During the few years preceding my diagnosis how many times did people say to me "are you okay, you look a bit pale".....and of course I turned around to them and said "yes, I'm fine". Well any changes would have been very subtle and neither my wife nor I would have seen them, other people were far more likely to spot when things didn't look quite right. On the left below is me from 2008, I can see now that I look very pale and much thinner in the face (in 2015 much rounder face and ruddy complexion....and I hadn't been on the wine at that stage of the evening). I weigh pretty much the same now as I did in 2008, so I haven't put any overall weight on. On the right is me last week, I've even got a bit of a double-chin....but oddly that makes me kinda happy! On the left it looks like my neck was so thin I couldn't even make my bow tie sit straight.

Okay, I can make a joke of it now and it isn't exactly a scientific study. But both my wife and I looked at these two photo's and it shocked us a bit. In the 5 years between the photo on the left being taken and the tumour coming out, how much bigger did it get....how much less damage would it have done if it had been discovered earlier. Makes you wonder. 

The first time he saw me my Endocrinologist said I presented looking like the typical pituitary patient, very pale and thin faced, now I really see what he meant!