A chance visit to an allergy doctor changed Melissa’s life

“And then the doctor said, ‘I think you have acromegaly’. I was like ‘who are you?’, I never met you before,” Melissa remembers. The doctor made her promise to see an endocrinologist straight away.

Melissa kept her promise, and things moved fast. Blood work concluded her growth hormone level was four times above normal and an MRI scan revealed a macro tumor on her pituitary: Melissa was diagnosed with acromegaly.

Melissa had two surgeries to remove the tumor, followed by six weeks of radiation, but a small part of the tumor remains. “Because the tumor is sitting on my optic nerve, they have to be really careful about the little bit that is left. If they remove the rest of the tumor, I could go blind,” Melissa explains. “I should not have vision in my right eye because of where the tumor is, but I do. I wear glasses, but other than that my sight is fine.”

Melissa does not have many memories from the surgery, but she does remember getting her sense of smell back afterwards: 

"About two weeks after the second surgery, I had the packing taken out and I could finally smell again. On the way home, we passed my favorite bakery, and smelling the fresh bread I literally started crying because I was so excited, I could smell!"

In hindsight, Melisssa realizes her symptoms started a few years before her diagnosis, with headaches and irregular menstrual cycles. But it was not until she got her diagnosis that everything fell into place. “There were a lot of little things that were not serious but after getting the diagnosis I was able to look back and see they were actually due to acromegaly,” she says.

“Just knowing what I have has made a difference. That is probably the biggest thing; having the awareness and knowing I can manage my symptoms better. It has given me a kind of peace of mind. It is what it is and there’s not much I can do about it. I just have to live with it, and I have come to accept it.”