• 5 months ago
A nurse was diagnosed with a brain tumour which made her think people were speaking a different language - and she blames it on taking HRT.

Lucy Woodhouse, 43, says she experienced severe headaches which felt like hangovers and struggled to read aloud.

But then in a meeting with colleagues she found herself unable to understand what they were saying, and tests revealed she had a golf ball-sized tumour.

She says she believes the meningioma tumour is linked to the Depo-Provera contraceptive injection, rounds of IVF she had and HRT medication - all of which contain the hormone progesterone.

She says she had the Depo-Provera injection multiple times in 1997, and in 2013 underwent three rounds of IVF over two years.

She had the progesterone Mirena coil inserted in 2021 when she started HRT medication - which doctors have now told her not to take because of connections to meningioma tumours, she says.

Meningiomas, the most common type of brain tumour, are a mostly non-cancerous brain tumour and are nearly twice as common in females as males.

In 2013, scientists from the Danish Cancer Research Centre found a link between post-menopausal hormone treatment HRT and meningioma.

Meningiomas are also commonly found among women who are pregnant or having fertility treatment, as oestrogen can interact with the tumour and potentially make it grow faster according to a 2012 study.

And a study published in the British Medical Journal this year found prolonged use of certain progesterone medications was linked to a greater risk of meningioma.

According to the NHS website, it is common to have no side effects after taking HRT but is has been associated with a small increase in the risk of cancer.

Nurse Lucy, from Hereford, said: “I was sat in a senior meeting at work and I just felt like I didn’t understand anything anyone was saying - I’m usually quite on the ball but they might as well have been speaking Chinese.

"I thought they were speaking a different language.

“One night I was reading a story to my five-year-old and I could read the words but I couldn’t say them, something was going wrong between my eyes and mouth.

“I started HRT two years before my brain tumour diagnosis – I think the meningioma was feeding off the oestrogen and progesterone.

“Every time I got a headache it was an hour after I fell asleep and then it would linger into the next day.

“It felt like I'd drunk six bottles of wine. They were disabling headaches – I would be doubled up on all fours on my bed rocking and trying to get rid of it.”

The mum-of-three first started noticing symptoms around December 2023 and first went to the doctors on 19 February this year after experiencing a particularly bad headache while visiting London.

She says in retrospect there were symptoms six months prior - but she put it down to being a tired mum.

She asked to try migraine tablets, but the nurse in the GP surgery noticed she was blinking unevenly, and she was sent to her lo

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Transcript
00:00Morning. It's Friday. I'm not feeling good this morning. I'm feeling tired and the
00:15realization of it all is sinking in I think. My head hurts and I'm dosed up on
00:24morphine. I think they're gonna send me home today, probably, or tomorrow, which
00:32is good in some ways because it means I get to see the kids. It's a bit easier
00:36and I'll be in my own bed but I don't feel like I'm kind of able to do much as
00:43well so in a way it's been nice being here because people do things for you. So
00:51I'm still waiting at the moment but I think that'll be the plan and I'll
00:56update you as I get any more news. Hi. So I've just done a really stupid thing and
01:06Googled the name of my tumor and everyone says don't Google but I couldn't
01:15not do it so I did and now I wish I hadn't done it. No one had told me how
01:21big the tumor was or where it was and I just asked one of the nurses because I
01:26wanted to know and it's three centimetres by three centimetres by 2.6
01:34centimetres and it's sitting behind my eye which explains a lot of the pain
01:41behind my eye and some of the problems I'm having with my eyes and I've
01:47Googled it and it says it's really difficult to operate on because of how
01:51it's positioned so now I'm worried about that and that's all I can think about
01:56which is a bit silly. Morning. It's Sunday now and I'm home. I came home
02:06yesterday and it's nice to be home, really nice to be home although it feels
02:14strange because normally when you come home from hospital it's because you're
02:18better and I'm home but I'm not better so that felt a bit strange. I'm going to
02:27Cardiff this week. I've got to wait for confirmation of when my appointment will
02:33be but they felt it was better for me just to go home from my mental health
02:39really and also because it's easier apparently to arrange appointment
02:46for somebody that's at home rather than doing a bed-to-bed transfer which
02:51absolutely makes sense because there aren't any beds as we all know. So yeah
02:58just a bit of a waiting game. I'm on double the morphine I was on in hospital
03:05just the pain is is quite severe now around my eye but I'm at least
03:15able to sleep in my own bed which is really nice and have visitors and the
03:20kids are going to come and see me this afternoon which is lovely. I can't wait
03:23to see them and I've had some visits from my friends already which has been
03:27so nice and I've got one of my good friends coming this afternoon and yeah
03:33so it's really that's really lovely although it's I'm finding it more tiring
03:38than I thought I would. So yeah that's the update for today just trying to stay
03:49positive. I've been diagnosed with a brain tumour. It all happened quite
03:56suddenly. I've been having headaches for about two weeks and ended up going for a
04:03scan on Monday and they found that I've got a mass on my brain and so I've been
04:11in hospital a week. I came home last night and I'm going to be seeing the
04:15neurosurgeons in Cardiff this week to see if they can operate on it or what
04:23the treatments going to be. If they're able to get to it. It's behind my
04:29eyes so it's a bit of a difficult place to remove it I think.

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