Amy had just turned 25, but her body seemed to be turning against her: crushing fatigue, bone density loss, and months without getting her period. We saw multiple doctors. They suggested allergies, burnout, or that maybe she just needed more sleep. Then we got her MRI results back: My girlfriend had a brain tumor.
Amy has a prolactinoma, a tumor of the pituitary gland, the pea-size organ at the base of the brain that controls your hormones. In many cases, prolactinomas are benign, slow growing, and shrink with medication. The growth was caught late, gaining mass fast, and sitting in a rare position that threatens her vision. And Amy’s hormone levels were wildly elevated.
We were told that a standard course of treatment—including two surgeries—would get rid of the tumor entirely. It didn’t. The tumor kept coming back. I spent weeks as her full-time nurse, holding her hand through headaches that left her bedridden. She couldn’t bend over, couldn’t blow her nose for fear of a spinal fluid leak. One night, desperate for answers, I started talking to an AI chatbot. It was then that I had a wild thought: I’m going to cure her myself.