For some women, there’s a pebble on the road to success: chronic and/or mental illness. Four women share their stories
It’s been 12 years since the birth of my youngest child, and I’ve been unwell since.
I don’t have an actual diagnosis, but I was sick with severe hyperemesis gravidarum (HG) in each of my four pregnancies, and my body never really recovered. During the last pregnancy, my doctor said he’d never seen such a difficult case as mine, and my children thought I was dying.
After I gave birth, I was very weak from malnutrition and wasn’t well enough to even think of going back to work until my baby was a year old. I then developed a benign tumor in my pituitary gland, which has hampered the ability of my digestive system to absorb nutrients properly. Since the beginning of my last pregnancy, I haven’t been able to eat well. I used to be a bit heavy; now I’m small and can’t gain weight.
The pituitary gland is a pea-size dgland at the base of the brain, but it has deceptively far-reaching effects on the body, like regulating metabolism, water levels, blood pressure and blood sugar, stimulating the thyroid, and bone and muscle maintenance. I can’t take any of these normal body functions for granted anymore — they can and have stopped working properly with little to no warning.
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