A MUM who thought her colleagues had started speaking a different language in a work meeting was diagnosed with a brain tumour. Lucy Woodhouse, 43, says she experienced severe headaches which felt like hangovers and struggled to read aloud. But then in a meeting with colleagues the nurse found herself unable to understand what they were saying.
Tests revealed she had a golf ball-sized tumour in her brain. Lucy says she believes her meningioma tumour is linked to the contraceptive injections, rounds of IVF and HRT medication she took - all of which contain the hormone progesterone. She says she had the Depo-Provera contraceptive injection multiple times in 1997, and in 2013 underwent three rounds of IVF over two years.
She also had the progesterone Mirena coil inserted in 2021 when she started HRT medication - which doctors have now told her not to take because of connections to meningioma tumours, she claims. Meningiomas, the most common type of brain tumour, are a mostly non-cancerous brain tumour and are nearly twice as common in women compared to men. In 2013, scientists from the Danish Cancer Research Centre found a link between post-menopausal hormone treatment HRT and meningioma.
Meningiomas have also been 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. More recent research from 2021 has called into question the link between pregnancy and meningiom.