Duecy: I had a pituitary tumor. Brain surgery changed my life in ways I never expected

In the early morning hours of Aug. 11, a nurse wheeled my hospital bed into Operating Room 3 at Swedish Cherry Hill.

Waiting for me was a team of about six people, dressed head to toe in blue surgical scrubs, their faces covered and mostly concealed.

They were there to do what I had spent weeks preparing for: the removal of a macroadenoma, or benign tumor, pressing on my pituitary gland and pushing against critical structures, including my optic nerves and carotid artery.

The room was mesmerizingly bright.

As my bed rolled toward the operating table, I noticed several large monitors positioned around the spot where my head would soon rest. At the other end of the table was a dark-colored wedge to keep my knees bent during surgery. Two orange-and-purple gel cushions waited for my heels.

It looked less like a place where I was about to have brain surgery and more like some bizarre spa treatment, complete with the world’s best personal movie theater or gaming setup.

By then, I already had two IVs. One in a vein in my right hand and another in my left arm.

I was completely awake when one of the masked voices asked if I could slide myself from the hospital bed onto the operating table.

I’ve been asked to do that during previous surgeries, and I have a theory about why: It’s probably a lot easier to have a 6-foot-4, 230-plus-pound guy move himself than to sedate him and have an entire team of people do the heavy lifting.

So, I slid onto the table.

The anesthesiologist looked at me and said, “Mr. Duecy, I’m going to start administering some drugs that will make you go to sleep.”

“Wait,” I said. “I have something I want to tell all of you.”

I looked around the room at the masked faces staring back at me.

Then, fulfilling a request from my wife and daughter, whose senses of humor are every bit as warped as mine, I delivered my final pre-surgery message.

It was a line from the 2000 movie Almost Famous, in which Russell Hammond, played by Billy Crudup, tells a young reporter, while standing on a rooftop above a swimming pool at a packed high school party:

“And you can tell Rolling Stone magazine that my last words were: ‘I’m on drugs!’”

Two members of the surgical team got the reference, and they laughed.

The others were clearly too young to recognize a 26-year-old movie quote.

Mission accomplished. Then I got serious.

“Thank you, everyone. You’re about to change my life, and I appreciate it more than you know,” I said. “All right, let’s go.”

What seemed like a split second later, I woke up in a hospital bed.

A three-inch sponge was taped beneath my nose to collect the fluids draining from my sinuses. My head was pounding worse than any migraine I had ever experienced, and an ice pack was placed on top of my head.

But I was alive. I was awake, and my life had, indeed, changed forever.

Surgery and success

For four hours that August morning, an ear, nose, and throat surgeon created a path through my sphenoid sinus, which is a hollow space behind the nose and at the base of the skull.

He and my neurosurgeon then made a tiny opening through the bone to reach my pituitary gland. They removed the tumor. Then they closed everything back up (for time’s sake, I’ve made this surgery sound simple when it’s far from simple; it’s brain surgery).

The first 24 hours, I’d find out, weren’t so simple either.

One month later, however, I have no cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) leaking through my nose or down my throat, a potential complication after this type of surgery. My headaches are gone. My sinuses are almost 100% clear.

And yet, there’s almost no physical evidence that any of it happened.

Unlike, say, knee surgery, I can’t look down and see a scar. I can’t see the swelling or the stitches. Everything happened inside my head.

That messes with your mind a little. But I did notice something almost immediately.

The next day, my vision seemed clearer than it had been in years. Colors, especially reds and yellows, seemed to pop.

Once I got home from the hospital, which was a few days later, I asked my wife if she had changed something on our television. I had never seen the picture look so crisp.

“Nope,” she said. “That’s you.”

The tumor was no longer pressing against my optic nerves. But the changes weren’t just physical.

Since the surgery, friends have told my wife I seem different. Happier. No, much happier.

I had read the testimonials. I had heard from listeners who told me they experienced something similar after their pituitary tumors were removed, and I hoped it might happen to me.

Well, it is happening. It’s as if somebody flipped a switch.

My mind feels clearer. My thoughts seem more organized. I feel like I’ve shed this overall feeling of dullness and gray that I had carried for years and replaced it with something bright and almost perpetually positive.

It’s wonderful. And, honestly, a little scary.

Because looking back, I now understand just how much the hormones produced by that tumor were affecting me.

My mood. My energy. My outlook. My overall sense of well-being.

For years, there were times when I felt pretty miserable without really understanding why.

Now I have a pretty good idea. And then, after the surgery — poof. It’s gone.

Before surgery, I said I was fighting to get the old me back. I did, and it feels fantastic.

My recovery after surgery

Doctors expected I’d spend one night in the hospital and go home the next day. Instead, one night turned into three after a complication.

Hours after surgery, I started getting sick. Then I started throwing up. A lot. About 30 times over nearly five hours.

The pills I was taking for swelling and pain were replaced with IV medications. Four different anti-nausea medications did nothing. My medical team even canceled a scheduled 3 a.m. MRI (yes, they perform MRIs around the clock) because they were worried I might throw up while inside the tube.

Finally, a cortisol test provided the answer — it had dropped to one microgram per deciliter, which is dangerous.

After years of my pituitary gland being compressed by the tumor, followed by brain surgery, part of the gland had essentially decided to take a break. It stopped properly signaling my adrenal glands to produce cortisol, a hormone our bodies need to maintain normal functions.

The treatment was straightforward: regular IV doses of steroids overnight. And it worked.

The vomiting stopped. My appetite came back. And soon I was walking laps around the hospital wing and climbing the stairwell, partly because I wanted to get moving and partly because I wanted to prove to the occupational and physical therapists that I was ready to be on my own.

I wanted them to remove the bed alarm and let me walk to the bathroom by myself (I quickly learned that, in a hospital, it’s the small victories). And there were plenty of people making sure those victories happened.

It seemed like every hour, on the hour, there was another knock at my door.

My doctor, hospital administrators, insurance representatives, the head of nursing, clipboard in hand, asking me to fill out a survey.

Occupational and physical therapists. Nurses checking my vital signs, performing cognitive tests, collecting urine samples, administering pain medication and nasal sprays, wiping down my upper body with antibacterial wipes and changing my sheets.

And then there were the “mosquitoes.” That’s what one nurse called the technicians who needed to draw my blood for more tests (which seemed a constant).

Sometimes I was so exhausted I could barely wake up. I’d lift an arm onto the side of the bed rail, barely conscious, and feel a needle piercing my hand or arm as they collected another sample.

By the time I left the hospital, the “mosquitoes” had left plenty of pinholes in me. But I never really minded. Because every poke, every test, every interruption, every knock on the door was somebody doing their job — making sure I felt better.

And for that, I’m grateful.

Nurses are saints

A lot of people argue the medical industry is broken. Maybe. Maybe not. That’s not for me to say.

What I can tell you is this: the medical staff at Swedish are far from broken. They did their jobs with professionalism and compassion — even when patients down the hall from me were yelling and cursing at them.

I asked one of my nurses how they could take that kind of treatment.

He explained it simply:

“Look, a lot of folks are hurting. They’re in pain. Sometimes they’re at their worst, and we understand that,” he said. “It’s our job to look past all of that and just make them better.”

I had a team of saints looking after me.

They genuinely cared about my pain, my recovery and, most of all, about me.

And here’s how much that mattered to me: A couple of times, I felt so bad watching someone treat them poorly that I actually fibbed about how much pain I was in.

Instead of telling my nurse it was a seven out of 10, I told her it was a three. Why?

Because I didn’t want him to have to order the medication, check it out, administer it, fill out the paperwork, and do everything else that came with it.

He already had enough on his plate.

But one blood pressure reading later, my nurse looked at me and said:

“Luke! You’re not at three! Tell me the truth. I don’t want you to be in pain. I’m here for you — to help you heal and get home to your family.”

That stopped me because he was right.

My nurses were saints. Thankless, extraordinary saints who showed up every day, absorbed the worst of people’s pain and frustration, and still chose to care.

We need more people like them in this world.

Final thoughts

According to the National Institutes of Health, about one in 1,000 people have a symptomatic pituitary adenoma. But the actual number is much higher because many people have these tumors and never know it. Studies suggest as many as one in six people may have a small pituitary tumor that never causes symptoms.

Chances are you’ve heard of one of these folks:

• Olympic figure-skating champion Scott Hamilton
• Legendary professional wrestler Andre the Giant
• Motivational speaker, life coach, and entrepreneur Tony Robbins
• British opera and pop singer Russell Watson
• Wrestlers The Great Khali and Omos
• Celebrity makeup artist Kevyn Aucoin

All of them have said that they have or had pituitary tumors.

Back in August, I explained why I was sharing my story.

Somewhere, someday, someone else may hear the same words I heard and feel the same fear and uncertainty I felt. My hope was that by sharing my journey, I could provide a little information, some perspective, and maybe even some comfort.

Since then, I’ve heard from dozens of listeners and readers who shared their own stories or the stories of loved ones who have gone through something similar.

Thank you all for sharing your stories with me, and please continue to do so.

I’ve also heard from several people who were concerned about symptoms they were experiencing. They told me they were going to talk to their doctors about them. Some told me they were going to tell, not ask, their doctors to look into it.

And that is great news.

Because if sharing my story gets even one person to pay attention to their body, ask questions, and get the answers they need, then every uncomfortable moment of telling this story was worth it.

For me, there is another reason I can look back on all of this with gratitude. My doctors removed every bit of my tumor. I shouldn’t have to deal with it ever again.

In the short term, I still have some hoops to jump through, and I still can’t cough or blow my nose, drink through a straw, bend over, or lift heavy weights. I’ll have an MRI every couple of years for the rest of my life to make sure I remain tumor-free. But those things are small prices that I am more than happy to pay.

If you are diagnosed, I hope you find a medical and surgical team like mine.

I’m still blown away by what these people do every day. They perform what, to me, feels like nothing short of a miracle, and they did it for me.

I will never be able to thank them enough. Ever.

More information

What are pituitary tumors and adenomas? Pituitary tumors and adenomas – Symptoms and causes – Mayo Clinic

How can I advocate for myself?

National Patient Advocate Foundation, Medical Self-Advocacy, Independent Patient Advocates | Get Help Now – GNA

Meet my neurosurgeon: Martin Rutkowski, MD – YouTube

Follow Luke Duecy on X. Read more of his stories here. Submit news tips here.