A nurse has revealed the first symptom of her ‘golf ball-sized’ brain tumour after she realised something was very wrong during a meeting.
Lucy Woodhouse, 43, was in a meeting with colleagues when she found herself unable to understand what they were saying. Further tests revealed that she had a tumour in her brain.
Meningioma tumours, such as the one that Woodhouse had, are mostly benign and not cancerous, and form among the membranes that support and protect the brain and spinal cord.
“I was 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 another language,” Woodhouse explains.
“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.”
These symptoms started in December 2023 but, looking back, Woodhouse thinks the first symptoms actually appeared around six months before.
“Every time I got a headache it was an hour after I fell asleep and then it would linger into the next day,” she explains.
“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.”
She went to the GP and asked to try migraine tablets, but the nurse in the GP surgery noticed she was blinking unevenly, and she was sent to her local hospital for a CT scan.
Following the scan, she was told by doctors they’d found something troubling and she was blue-lighted to The Grange in Cwmbran where she was told she had a brain tumour following an MRI.
In May, Woodhouse underwent major surgery to remove the tumour – which was growing just three millimetres from her optical nerve and could have caused her to go blind.
“I’ve got a scar now, but I’m doing really well,” Woodhouse says. “I’ve got some bald patches and my memory isn’t amazing. When I was diagnosed I was beside myself and one of the hardest things was telling the kids, that was really difficult. “
Woodhouse has warned others who may get headaches they don’t usually get to have it checked out – and also to get their eyes tested as opticians can sometimes spot this type of tumour.
The nurse believes several hormone therapies, including hormone replacement therapy (HRT) and two rounds of IVF also may have contributed to the tumour.
“I started HRT two years before my brain tumour diagnosis, I think the meningioma was feeding off the oestrogen and progesterone,” she adds.
“If you’re a woman who has had a lot of hormone treatment, multiple rounds of IVF or HRT or been pumped full of hormones for whatever reason, given that strong link you should go and get a scan.”
In 2013, scientists from the Danish Cancer Research Centre found a link between 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.
A separate study published in the British Medical Journal this year found prolonged use of certain progesterone medications was linked to a greater risk of meningioma.
Additional reporting by SWNS.