"I thought people were speaking a different language - but it was a brain tumour"

A nurse was diagnosed with a brain tumour which made her think people were speaking a different language - and she blames it on taking HRT.

Lucy Woodhouse, 43, says she experienced severe headaches which felt like hangovers and struggled to read aloud.

But then in a meeting with colleagues she found herself unable to understand what they were saying, and tests revealed she had a golf ball-sized tumour.

She says she believes the meningioma tumour is linked to the Depo-Provera contraceptive injection, rounds of IVF she had and HRT medication - all of which contain the hormone progesterone.

She says she had the Depo-Provera injection multiple times in 1997, and in 2013 underwent three rounds of IVF over two years.

She had the progesterone Mirena coil inserted in 2021 when she started HRT medication - which doctors have now told her not to take because of connections to meningioma tumours, she says.

Meningiomas, the most common type of brain tumour, are a mostly non-cancerous brain tumour and are nearly twice as common in females as males.

In 2013, scientists from the Danish Cancer Research Centre found a link between post-menopausal hormone treatment HRT and meningioma.

Meningiomas are also commonly found among women who are pregnant or having fertility treatment, as oestrogen can interact with the tumour and potentially make it grow faster according to a 2012 study.

And a study published in the British Medical Journal this year found prolonged use of certain progesterone medications was linked to a greater risk of meningioma.

According to the NHS website, it is common to have no side effects after taking HRT but is has been associated with a small increase in the risk of cancer.

Nurse Lucy, from Hereford, said: “I was sat in a senior meeting at work and I just felt like I didn’t understand anything anyone was saying - I’m usually quite on the ball but they might as well have been speaking Chinese.

"I thought they were speaking a different language.

“One night I was reading a story to my five-year-old and I could read the words but I couldn’t say them, something was going wrong between my eyes and mouth.

“I started HRT two years before my brain tumour diagnosis – I think the meningioma was feeding off the oestrogen and progesterone.

“Every time I got a headache it was an hour after I fell asleep and then it would linger into the next day.

“It felt like I'd drunk six bottles of wine. They were disabling headaches – I would be doubled up on all fours on my bed rocking and trying to get rid of it.”

The mum-of-three first started noticing symptoms around December 2023 and first went to the doctors on 19 February this year after experiencing a particularly bad headache while visiting London.

She says in retrospect there were symptoms six months prior - but she put it down to being a tired mum.

She asked to try migraine tablets, but the nurse in the GP surgery noticed she was blinking unevenly, and she was sent to her lo