A nurse has been diagnosed with a brain tumour that made her feel as if people were speaking to her in a different language, and she blames it on hormone replacement therapy (HRT). Lucy Woodhouse, 43, suffered from severe hangover-like headaches and struggled to read aloud. The New York Post reported.
During a meeting with colleagues, she suddenly couldn’t understand what they were saying, leading to tests that revealed a golf ball-sized tumor on her head. She believes the meningioma tumor is linked to the birth control injection Depo-Provera, rounds of in vitro fertilization (IVF) and hormone replacement therapy medication, all of which contain the hormone progesterone.
Lucy received the Depo-Provera injection several times in 1997, underwent three rounds of IVF over two years from 2013 and had the Mirena progesterone intrauterine device inserted in 2021, when she began taking hormone replacement therapy. She says doctors have now advised her to stop taking hormone replacement therapy because of its link to the meningiomatous tumors.
Meningiomas, the most common type of brain tumor, are mostly noncancerous and are nearly twice as common in women as in men. In 2013, scientists at the Danish Cancer Research Center discovered a link between postmenopausal hormone replacement therapy and meningioma. Meningiomas are also commonly found among women who are pregnant or undergoing fertility treatment, as estrogen can interact with the tumor and potentially speed up its growth, according to a 2012 study. Additionally, a study published in the British Medical Journal this year found that long-term use of certain progesterone medications was linked to an increased risk of meningioma.
According to the NHS website, while it’s common to have no side effects from taking HRT, it has been linked to a small increased risk of cancer. Lucy, from Hereford, said: “I was sitting in a high-level meeting at work and felt like I couldn’t understand anything they were saying – I’m usually very focused, but they might as well have been speaking Chinese.
“I thought they were speaking a different language. One night I was reading a story to my five-year-old son and he could read the words but he couldn’t say them, something was wrong between my eyes and my mouth.
“I started hormone replacement therapy two years before I was diagnosed with the brain tumor. I believe the meningioma was feeding on estrogen and progesterone. Every time I had a headache, it would hurt for an hour after I fell asleep and then persist into the next day.
“I felt like I had drunk six bottles of wine. I had crippling headaches. I would sit on all fours in bed, rocking and trying to get rid of them.”
The mother of three first noticed symptoms around December 2023 and visited the doctor on February 19, 2024, after experiencing a particularly bad headache while in London.
Looking back, she believes she had had symptoms six months earlier but put them down to being a tired mother. She asked to try migraine tablets but a nurse at her GP surgery noticed she was blinking irregularly and referred her to her local hospital for a CT scan.
After the scan, doctors told her they had found something worrying and rushed her to The Grange in Cwmbran, where an MRI scan revealed she had a brain tumour. She was then sent to the University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff, where the specialist recommended a “watch and wait” strategy.
However, Lucy sought a second opinion from a private neurosurgeon in London, who recommended immediate surgery. In May, she underwent major surgery to remove the tumour, which was growing just three millimetres from her optic nerve and could have caused her blindness. She is now recovering well, but still has memory problems at times.
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