About

This is my diary of my journey with a disease called ‘Acromegaly’. It’s a rare disease, it’s not catching, and it doesn’t do a very good job at killing people off quickly either. Thankfully.

So what is acromegaly then? Well there are a quite a few sites that explain it very well. See: Pituitary Foundation for a good explanation.

It’s basically a very very slow growth on the pituitary gland that causes too much growth hormone to be pumped around the body. The pituitary gland is a happy tiny little thing around the size of a pea which spends its time juggling about with various hormone levels that keeps things running smoothly. The growth on the pituitary gland starts off because one of the cells has decided to be a bit of a rebel and start its own party. That cell obviously being a bit of an enterprising rogue is  slightly different to the rest of the cells but still oozes out the hormone that it was used to making, and divides to produce more cells just like itself. This can take absolutely ages, probably because it is not a particularly nasty rebel and it clings onto the pituitary gland without floating off and popping up all over the place.