In an interview with Good Housekeeping this month, the presenter, comedian and cake innuendo-ist Sue Perkins has revealed that she has a benign brain tumour, sitting on her pituitary gland.
The pituitary gland, which is found at the base of the brain, controls the activity of your other hormone or ‘endocrine’ glands, which means that while Perkins’ growth is benign is still affects her hormones and has made her infertile. ‘We live in a time and place where we think everything is possible,’ she says in the interview. ‘I don’t know if I would have gone on to have children. But as soon as someone says you can’t have something, you want it more than anything,’ she said.
Perkins found out about the tumour eight years ago while undergoing tests as part of the BBC show Supersizers, in which she and co-host Giles Coren ate like figures from various times in history.
‘I’m lucky that it’s benign, so it’s not in itself a worrying thing,’ she says. ‘Sometimes it’s big and makes me mad, and sometimes it’s small and is in the background. Sometimes it screws up my hormones. I have various tests now to make sure the side effects aren’t too onerous.’
This October, according to The Pituitary Foundation, is Pituitary Awareness Month, which aims to raise money and awareness for those suffering pituitary conditions, most commonly benign tumours or adenomas of the sort Sue Perkins has.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.