What about Bob?

For those of you who don't know who Bob is when I drop his name in casual conversation, he's inside my head. It's a tiny benign tumor that lives inside my pituitary gland, which itself is only the size of a pea.
It's a potentially problematic place for a tumor - as if there's a handy spot in the body to grow one - because the pituitary gland controls the production of a host of hormones that in a female control everything from thyroid function to reproduction and lactation. These types of tumors cause those hormones - typically all of them - to go haywire, but Bob has only stunted the production of thyroid hormone in my body. In fact, I've proven to be quite fertile and haven't had trouble nursing either of my kids. What's more interesting is that during each of my pregnancies my thyroid hormone levels have rebounded to some degree. And for that, my endocrinologist says I'm weird.
I was diagnosed five years ago, after a long battle with severe fatigue followed by spurts of rapid weight loss (of course, that's the part of the disease I can embrace). Blood tests showed my levels of thyroid hormone popping up and down like a yo-yo, and they didn't correspond with another key hormone - the one emitted by the pituitary gland. It simply wasn't regulating, well, me. So scans of my brain revealed I had a little extra something in my brain.
You can imagine having your doctor tell you that you have a brain tumor - yes, that's what a pituitary tumor is considered. It really was frightening at first, until I learned just how common these things are. I've read that up to 25 percent of the population has them, it's just that most people don't realize they have them until they start throwing off major body functions, as Bob did in my case.
So, back to "Bob." Since there was no indication that the tumor was cancerous and, unless he grew to interfere with my vision, he'd probably be coexisting with me for the rest of my life, I decided to name him. I figured I can't be afraid of something called Bob - full name, Bob the benign tumor. So Bob and I settled in for a long, happy existence together, agreeing that we'd check on him via MRI each year or so.
Soon after his discovery, I got married. A few months later, we checked on Bob with another MRI. No changes were noted, so I largely forgot about him. Poor little thing. That's what marriage will do. Then I became pregnant. My endocrinologist decided to err on the side of caution and skip our annual MRI. The next year I was nursing Katie, so we skipped it again. The third year, I was pregnant again and, you guessed it, we decided against the MRI.
Now that Adam has been born, my endocrinologist has decided that she can't wait for me to be between pregnancies and not nursing a baby, as I seem to have turned into some sort of factory. So after more than three years of estrangement, I'll see Bob again after my long-awaited MRI on Monday. That's right, at the advice of many throughout my lifetime, I'm getting my head examined on Monday. The MRI will confirm once again that I do in fact have grey matter between my ears. But what's more is that we hope it also confirms that Bob is still his same old jovial self. We hope so.