TIFU: by having reoccurring nightmares, not hitting puberty and being severely overweight, but not thinking twice about it.

TIFU: Obligatory this happened a few months back as obviously I have been recovering for a while

When I was around 13, I started getting a ringing in my ear, severe ringing, it kept me up constantly as it was like having a radio out of frequency at all times inside my head. I did a bit of googling and decided on the fact that it was tinnitus, maybe a bit too much loud music when I was little, I wasn't sure, just had to deal with it.

Fast forward a couple years, must have been around 15, this was when I realised something was wrong, I was coming up 16 and yet I hadn't hit puberty whatsoever, no hair on legs, no pubes, never shaved in my life, no armpit hair, and I was around 5ft exactly, as a 15 year old male. I know my whole family knew something was up, as we were constantly back and forward to GP's, ear infections, migraines, vision issues the lot.

The main turning point was the nightmares, now I'm not talking the nightmares where you have a bad dream, wake yourself up in shock, and take a few minutes to clear your head before going back to sleep. These were intense nightmares. There was multiple times, sometimes twice a week, where I'd be screaming for my mother, thinking my little sisters had been kidnapped, someone was in my room, some of the scariest shit I've experienced to this date. Multiple times I had ended up jumping down our staircase and almost cracking my head open, because of these scares.

When this started to happen frequently, my mother introduced the idea of a therapist to help me overcome these nightscares, to no avail, these failed, and the embarrassing scares continued.

One day I was driving home, my vision had been really off, I had bad, bad double vision, as I was driving, I was swerving in the wrong lanes, I couldn't see which one of the cars in front of me were real, or duplicated, and ended up scarily taking myself somewhere to pull up, and get my mam to come and pick me up.

We forced the opticians to allow me to get new glasses to deal with this double vision. We went through the checks, perfect. Until; the eye health evaluation. I was informed the optician doing my checks was a student on placement, and when she did the checks, her face went almost white and her jaw dropped. (She had obviously learned about some of the most serious signs of damaged vision, but never expected to actually see it) she said I had the most dilated pupils she had ever seen, and the machine couldn't even recognise where my pupils and iris were separated.

She sent me straight to AandE, and I got numerous scans, an MRI scan of the brain was the bad news. They came over to me and my shit scared mother, and told me I had a brain tumour, and within the next week would be getting it removed.

At 1am that day, I got rushed to hospital, into my ward, and then the next day went under a 12 hour neurosurgery operation to remove a brain tumour lodged inbetween my two eyes. I lost my peripheral vision, and my whole pituitary gland was fucked, hence the puberty problems, headaches, earraches, weight the lot.

All thanks goes to that optician that acted so strictly on the eye problems, and obviously the two neurosurgeons that completed a gruelling 12 hour operation to remove the tumour. Safe to say that was the scariest day of my life, signing that sheet of possible risks felt like signing my life away, thank god I'm still here. Also the scar on the rightside of my head is pretty badass.

The tumour I had is notorious for returning if not fully removed, so please wish me luck I never have to do that again, as relearning to walk was a pain in the ass, and losing the weight I gained. Also wish me luck that I can reproduce, and maybe even have my own kids in the future!

TLDR: I never took serious nightscares as a real problem, and allowed myself to lose my peripheral vision, and all natural hormone production, and possibly chances of ever having my own kids.