one in 10 people<\/a> will develop a pituitary tumour in their lifetime but most of these tumours are small, benign, and never cause symptoms or require removal.<\/p>\nSpeaking on RT\u00c9\u2019s Brendan O\u2019Connor Show, the TG4 presenter said he had a 6mm growth on that part of the brain, which he had previously managed with injections.<\/p>\n
He decided to get the tumour removed as it \u201cwas just acting the maggot, doing certain things to the body. It was changing hormones, hormones that we need every day to function\u201d.<\/p>\n
He noted that he was frightened after being told the procedure would involve going through the nose and drilling into the skull.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hadn\u2019t discussed it with anyone else. My family knew about it. My wife knew about it. But I just kept it private,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
![\"Screenshot](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/1793539713_418_.png\")
\n \u00d3 hEochag\u00e1in with podcast co-costs Tommy Tiernan and Laurita Blewitt. Instagram<\/p>\n
Instagram\n<\/p>\n
After a couple of months of recovery, \u00d3 hEochag\u00e1in said he now feels good despite being worried about the long-term effects.<\/p>\n
When he eventually opened up about the experience, he said he received messages of support.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cSo many people have got in touch with me saying my daughter\u2019s just had the surgery. My 16-year-old boy had a tumour on his pituitary. I\u2019m getting emails from people all over the all over the country, and a few emails from America and Australia of people going, thanks for talking about pituitary surgery, Hector\u201d, he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00d3 hEochag\u00e1in has just launched his latest book Irish words for every occasion, which focuses on the use of conversational Irish.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He also co-hosts The Tommy, Hector and Laurita podcast <\/a>alongside Tommy Tiernan and Laurita Blewitt.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TG4 PRESENTER HECTOR \u00d3 hEochag\u00e1in has opened up about his recent brain surgery to remove a tumour after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":671781,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[65133,27181,93,103,284602,61,60,2733,284603,15337],"class_list":["post-671780","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-brain-surgery","tag-brain-tumour","tag-entertainment","tag-health","tag-hector-o-heochagain","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-october","tag-pituitary-tumour","tag-tg4"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/671780","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=671780"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/671780\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/671781"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=671780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=671780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=671780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}