I Am a Brain Tumor Survivor
When I was 10 years old, I started getting really bad headaches, and I started getting sick to my stomach and throwing up. This got worse until my parents took me to the doctor and they did a lot of tests and discovered a craniopharyngioma, which is a benign brain tumor. They think I had it for a while, growing slowly until it got to be about the size of a golf ball, when it started causing the symptoms. I had surgery to remove the tumor a few weeks before my 11th birthday.
I weighed about 150 lbs when I was 11, but about a week after surgery, my body changed. I felt tired a lot and I was very, very hungry. Then I started getting fatter, fast. I went back to see the doctor, and they figured out that the surgery to remove the tumor damaged my hypothalamus, which is the part of the brain that helps control metabolism and appetite. My body doesn't burn calories like normal, which means that diet and exercise don't work. I get fatter even with calorie restriction that would make most other people lose weight. I am now 14, and I weigh 560 lbs.
There's medicines that help me control my appetite a little, but there's no cure. Gastric bypass surgery can help, but I'm too young for it, and besides, my parents think I'm old enough to make my own decisions regarding it and after looking into it, it seems like to me that it is just substituting one set of problems for another.
My doctors think that eventually I'll stop gaining weight. But it's okay, though. I'm alive. The tumor could have killed me, but it didn't. It's gone, and I've had brain scans every 6 months and none of them have shown the tumor coming back.
It hasn't always been easy, though. I hated my body for a long time, but I've now come to accept and even learn to love my body.
I weighed about 150 lbs when I was 11, but about a week after surgery, my body changed. I felt tired a lot and I was very, very hungry. Then I started getting fatter, fast. I went back to see the doctor, and they figured out that the surgery to remove the tumor damaged my hypothalamus, which is the part of the brain that helps control metabolism and appetite. My body doesn't burn calories like normal, which means that diet and exercise don't work. I get fatter even with calorie restriction that would make most other people lose weight. I am now 14, and I weigh 560 lbs.
There's medicines that help me control my appetite a little, but there's no cure. Gastric bypass surgery can help, but I'm too young for it, and besides, my parents think I'm old enough to make my own decisions regarding it and after looking into it, it seems like to me that it is just substituting one set of problems for another.
My doctors think that eventually I'll stop gaining weight. But it's okay, though. I'm alive. The tumor could have killed me, but it didn't. It's gone, and I've had brain scans every 6 months and none of them have shown the tumor coming back.
It hasn't always been easy, though. I hated my body for a long time, but I've now come to accept and even learn to love my body.
