First blog, first post

Introduction

The need to write stuff down seems to have been eating away at me for years. I have tried diaries, note books, laptops and smartphones, but I am never consistent. If things are written in personal spaces, who will ever read them? Probably only me in my dotage for reasons of nostalgia.

About me – a start at least

Hi, I’m Bo. 30 years ago I was diagnosed with three brain tumours. Chemo and radiotherapy saw them off but not before they had damaged my optic nerves and squashed my pituitary gland. That is, for those who don’t know, the hormone master gland that dangles below the brain just behind the nose.

I have been taking hormone replacement therapy ever since. Hormones are produced in the body as and when required, hormone replacement therapy is sometimes like adding bagpipes to a finely tuned orchestra. Other times it is like having no orchestra at all. This can make life very challenging. This chronic condition is called panhypopituitarism. I do lead a normal-ish life, it just has more of the good/bad day twists and turns mixed with fatigue and mood swings than might normally be the case. This condition and its ups and downs have been the primary driver for writing things down; to remind me how this has affected my and my families life. I should add that memory is also affected by the condition.

What’s to come…

In the last year I have also been diagnosed with hyperparathyroidism, but more on the fun of this later.