In the interim...

My husband was finally released from physical therapy a few weeks ago for that surgery he had in June down at BAMC. We were both relieved - that was pretty tiring when we weren't used to having to be somewhere three and four times per week. Retirement really makes you... like being home. ;)

We've moved the majority of his care out of the VA for various reasons. Mostly the time it takes to get care or the lack of care. It's been a God send! Things that we had been fighting for the last year and a half to be looked at with the VA have been looked at in less than a month in the private practice world. While all of the news hasn't been wonderful per se,  at least we may finally have answers and that IS a good thing. 

Yesterday we went to the hospital where my husband had 15 tubes of blood drawn and then had a CT with contrast of his neck and brain done. His endocrinologist suspects a pituitary tumor. There are many types of pituitary tumors and they are almost always benign. This is a good thing. They can grow big enough to press on the optic nerves and cause loss of peripheral vision or all vision. For a man like my husband who has one eye this is a bad thing. His doctor is not the "lets see if it grows or not" kind of guy due to my husband having one eye so this is a good thing. If my husband does have a tumor it *may* explain some things that no other doctor or test has been able to explain. This is a good thing. This leaves us feeling conflicted - do we hope there is a tumor and that removing it fixes these mystery issues or does that make us crazy terrible people? We hope to have results next week but with the holidays I may be asking too much.

You are probably wondering how he ended up in this position. My husband has a TBI and that can cause hormonal imbalances. For my husband it has caused extremely low testosterone and extremely high prolactin. Prolactin is a female hormone and it is the thing driving this possible tumor. (He has other imbalances along with a vitamin D deficiency - all TBI related. It is definitely something to research. If you are familiar with Torrey Shannon, she is a wealth of information as well. If not for her I would have never known to request the tests that led us here.)

These tumor are treatable. My husband would have his removed. Depending on size, either through the nose and sinus or via craniotomy. According to Mayo radiation almost always follows surgery even though these tumors are almost never cancerous. Not all people have the tumors surgically removed first. There are other treatment options available but because of the risk of losing vision in his only eye my husband's doctor would take the most aggressive route if the CT is positive.

We are not telling our family yet until we have a definitive answer. No need to worry them over the holidays. And, as strange as it sounds, neither of us is worried. We see it as either answer is a good answer. Negative is a good answer, positive means that at least one if not more medical conditions will be corrected by the removal of the tumor. It feels incredibly odd to be calm about something like this but I am glad that we are. The holidays can be stressful enough without worrying about the unknown.

I hope that you all have a Merry Christmas (Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanzaa, etc.) and a joyous New Year!!!

Please leave me your words of wisdom!