When was the last time the doctor rang you?

5th May - Unexpected call

So there I am early afternoon trying not to fall asleep in yet another meeting about cloud computing. I'm beat by 12 O'Clock - the last thing I need is to go through a detailed technical meeting. My personal mobile phone starts ringing - the caller? The Doctor.

I spring up from the meeting room table and walk out - phone in hand. Outside the room, I take the call - all the while thinking 'What the hell could this be about?'

"Hello - it's Dr C here. Now .. I've had the results back from your blood test ..."

Wait? Results? Usually it takes a few days and I have to go to them .. and in any case, this time I wasn't even going back to the doctors for the results. They were just to be used by the endocrinologist as a reference for my consultation. The doctor continued:

"We need to discuss them - can you come in today please?"

Naturally I agreed and used it as leverage to get my arse out of the meeting about cloud technology (thanks understanding boss). What the hell could they have found out? I'll be honest, I crapped myself all the way up the M4 motorway.

My appointment was at 6pm.

The doctor advised, in a very tactful manner, that my prolactin levels were through the roof. This is a hormone produced by the pituitary gland in the brain. I'm not sure what unit the measurement is taken in - but apparently an average reading is in the low hundreds (he quoted around 200) - but mine was in the hundreds of thousands!!! I'm told the hospital ran the test twice just to be sure because it was so high. I'm not impressed .. prolactin helps women produce breast milk and I don't need it in abundance than you very much.

Here's where it gets tricky. Why would this be happening?

Well, the most likely explanation is apparently that I have a tumour on the pituitary gland. This would also explain issues that I've had with some very odd eye pain over the last year. It's unlikely that it will metastasise (like a spreading cancer) and will probably be a benign tumour - the size of which I will only know after I've had a brain scan.

When I started this blog .. I expected it to be 'nuts' centric .. not brain centric. That's the beauty of blogging. Twists and turns.

So the doctor is already talking about treating this with drugs but I guess this stance may change when the neurologist has taken his view. I'm expecting a call tomorrow from the hospital to kick this off. I'm not worried about this at all yet. Let's see what other crap they find whilst they're digging my garden.