It's a condition that can cause migraines, moodiness and even infertility.
However, many women don't know they have it, and it's more common than you think.
A tumor on the pituitary gland is so small it might be missed, but the symptoms are consistent for all women.
One Houston mom said she suffered headaches every day from this type of tumor. Even when her eyesight started to go, she knew something was wrong, but since it happened gradually she didn't make the connection. Luckily, her doctor did.
“She said let's go do an MRI just to rule out a brain tumor,” Kaia Kessler said. “Then it turns out I had one!”
Kessler said a tumor was impacting her well-being but she never pinpointed what was wrong.
“I was irritable because of that. I was frustrated. I didn't have very much patience,” she said.
Dr. David Baskin, director of the Houston Methodist Kenneth R. Peak Brain & Pituitary Tumor Treatment Center, said issues that are frequently dismissed as “moodiness” could indicate a tumor on the pituitary gland.
“It's got consequences of making too much of a hormone, it's got consequences as it grows of destroying the gland and knocking out the other hormones, and then as it starts to grow up into the brain it can do lots of other things due to mechanical compression of important brain structures,” Baskin said.
Meaning, patients may first experience swelling, weight gain or "brain fog," but if the tumor continues to grow, other functions like eyesight may disappear.
Baskin does a procedure where he can remove the tumor through the nostril. Basically, it's minimally invasive brain surgery and Kaia said it fixed everything.
“The first thing I noticed is that I stopped having headaches every day,” she said.
“If we can fix something that's abnormal, the whole system just reboots and resets exactly like it's supposed to,” Dr. Baskin explained.
In this case, that means the pituitary gland starts making the right amount of the hormone prolactin, making fertility a reality and resulting in a happy Mother’s Day for Kaia.
“Motherhood is exhausting and fabulous and the best gift ever so I’m really grateful to have that,” she said.
Baskin said he thought the operation was a gift from God when one day, long after Kaia’s surgery, he ran into her at a restaurant and she was standing there holding her baby.