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Actress Charly Clive, Pituitary Adenoma

December 4, 2021

MaryO News Items, Pituitary, Pituitary Surgery, Success Stories, Treatments, Video BBC, carotid artery, MRI, optic nerve, periods, peripheral vision, Pituitary adenoma, sleep, transsphenoidal, video Leave a comment

Best friends Charly Clive and Ellen Robertson thought carefully about what to call the tumour that was growing in Charly’s brain.

The doctors had their own name for the golf-ball-sized growth sitting right behind Charly’s left eye — a pituitary adenoma — but the friends decided they needed something less scary. They flirted with calling it Terry Wogan (‘as in Pitui-Terry Wogan,’ says Ellen), but that didn’t seem quite right.

So Britney Spears fan Charly, then 23, suggested Britney. Bingo! Not only was she ‘iconic and fabulous’, but Britney was also one of life’s survivors. From then on, they were a threesome — Charly, Ellen and Britney the brain tumour — although Ellen is at pains to point out that this Britney was never a friend.

What a thing to have to deal with, so young. The pair, who met at school in rural Oxfordshire, are now actresses. Charly’s biggest role to date has been in the critically acclaimed 2019 Channel 4 series Pure, while Ellen starred in the Agatha Christie mini-series The Pale Horse.

But this week they appeared together in Britney, a BBC comedy based on the story of Charly’s brain tumour. The TV pilot (and yes, they are hoping for a full series) is an expansion of a sell-out stage show they performed at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2016.

The production is admittedly surreal. Viewers are led inside Charly’s brain and the show includes a scene where Charly dons an inflatable sumo-wrestler suit on the day of her diagnosis. Poetic licence? No, it really happened.

‘My dad’s mate had given him a sumo suit as a silly Christmas present and so, on Doomsday, we took photos of me in it.’

The tone was set for how these friends would deal with the biggest challenge of their lives: they would laugh through it, somehow.

As the women, now 28, point out, what was the alternative?

Charly says: ‘It was that thing of laughing at the monster so you are not scared of it. If you cry when do you stop? It was easier to make light of it.’

Their show is not really about a brain tumour. It’s a celebration of friendship. Ellen pretty much moved in with Charly’s family during this time (‘To be in place when I exploded, so she could pick up the debris,’ says Charly).

The pair live together today, finishing each other’s sentences as we speak on Zoom — and at one point both miming Charly’s brain surgery (with gruesome sound effects).

This sort of silliness rooted their friendship, which started at the age of 14 when they wrote their own plays (Finding Emo, anyone?) while at school together in Abingdon. Charly later moved to New York to study dramatic arts, and Ellen studied at Cambridge.

In 2015, Charly came home for a visit, and went to see her GP (played in the drama by Omid Djalili) about her lack of periods and a blind spot in her peripheral vision. An MRI scan showed a mass on her brain. ‘They said it had eroded the bone in my nose and was pressing on the optic nerve, and it was lucky we had caught it,’ she says. ‘The next step would have been discovering it because I’d gone blind.’

Even worse, the tumour was so close to her carotid artery that removal might kill her — and they still had no idea if it was cancerous. Into the breach stepped Ellen. ‘I saw it as my job to make her laugh, which is what I’d always done anyway,’ she says. They both talk of toppling into limbo, ‘almost like a fantasy world’, says Charly. ‘As I was going through the tests, we’d do impressions of the doctors and create our own scenarios.’

The friends talk about sitting up into the night, watching TV. There is a touching moment when Charly admits she was afraid to sleep, and Ellen knew it. ‘It’s hard when you are thinking “What if the tumour grows another inch in the night and I don’t wake up?” ’

Charly was operated on in March 2016, and Ellen remembers the anaesthetist confiding that Charly’s heart had stopped on the operating table.

‘He wasn’t the most tactful person we’ve ever met. He said “Oh my God, guys, she died”.’ Charly makes a jazz hands gesture. ‘And guess who is alive again?’ Even at that darkest moment, there were flashes of humour. Ellen laughs at the memory of the surgeon in his scrubs, with wellies on. ‘They had blood on them. I was transfixed. I wanted to ask “Is that Charly’s . . . brain blood?” ’

In the stage version of the show, the anaesthetist gets two full scenes. ‘He’s the heartthrob of the piece,’ says Charly. ‘A sexy rugger bloke who is crap at talking to people.’

The days that followed the surgery were hideous — and yet they, too, have been mined for comedy. Charly’s face was bandaged, ‘as if I’d had a Beverly Hills facelift’, and she was warned that she could not sneeze. ‘If I did, bits of my brain would come out my nose,’ she says.

Ellen read her extracts from Harry Potter but ‘made them smutty’, which confused the already confused Charly further. ‘I was drug-addled and not myself, and in the most bizarre pain, concentrated in my face’.

‘That week after the surgery was the worst part of all,’ says Ellen, suddenly serious. ‘She was behaving oddly and there was this unacknowledged fear: was this Charly for ever?’ Oh, the relief when the old Charly eventually re-emerged — albeit a more fragile, often tearful version.

It was Ellen who persuaded Charly to take their stage show about her illness public — and it went on to win much critical acclaim. ‘I wanted Charly to see it as something other than just this rubbish chapter that needed to be forgotten about,’ says Ellen.

For her part, Charly credits her best friend as her saviour: ‘I don’t know how I would have got through it all without Ellen.’

The good news is that Britney was not cancerous, although surgery did not obliterate her entirely. ‘She’s still there, but tiny — just a sludge. I’ve been told that she won’t grow though. If I ever do get another brain tumour, it won’t be Britney.’

Off they go again, imagining what is happening now inside Charly’s brain. ‘Britney is still in there, trying on outfits for a comeback tour, but it won’t happen,’ says Charly. Ellen nods. ‘It’s over,’ she says. ‘But she’s just left a pair of shoes behind.’

Britney is available to watch on BBC Three and BBC iPlayer

Adapted from https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-10264203/I-laughed-brain-tumour-Id-never-stop-crying-Actress-Charly-Clive.html

In Memory of Natalie Fay ~ April 21, 2008

April 21, 2021

MaryO Adrenal, Cyclic, In Memory, Pituitary, Pituitary Surgery, radiation, Treatments acne, adoption, Allergist, Asthma, Atlanta, bilateral adrenalectomy, BLA, bloodwork, children, colon cancer, cortisol, counted cross-stitch, CT scan, cushing, Cushing Syndrome, Cushing's Awareness Pins, Dammit Dolls, depression, Dermatologist, Desert Storm, diabetes, dizzy spells, double vision, Dr. Hanks, Dr. Lewis Blevins, Dr. Nelson M. Oyesiku, Dr. Vance, Emory University, emotional symptoms, estrogen, eyes, headaches, Health, high blood pressure, hydrocortisone, hypertension, In Memory, kidney stones, medication, menstrual cycle, migraines, Neuro Ophthalmologist, North Carolina, OBGYN, optic nerve, periods, Persian Gulf, pituitary, Portsmouth Naval Hospital, radiation, radiation oncologist, rash, sinus cavity, Stereotactic Radiation, surgeon, third nerve palsy, thyroid, transphenoidal, transsphenoidal, tumor, UFC, UVa, Vanderbilt, weight Leave a comment

in-memory

This is another Golden Oldie. I’m not sure when it was last written or updated by Natalie but it was updated by me after she died April 21, 2008.

Hi! My name is Natalie, I am 35 years old and I’ve been married for 15 years. I don’t have any children at this time, but we are in the process of adopting. We can hardly wait for our little one to show up on our doorstep. We live down in southern Maryland at this time. I grew up in southern Virginia on a farm. My Dad is still farming; he raises peanuts, corn and soybeans. He has had 2 battles with colon cancer and is still hanging in there. He gives me inspiration. I have my Mom and Grandmother still living home on the farm too and we get there as often as we can. My sister lives near by my parents and has 2 boys. They spend a portion of every summer with us.

There is so much to tell, I really don’t know where to start. I had my official diagnosis in Jan. of 1990. But after all of the information I have learned over the years, I fully believe that it could have started as early as childhood. We will never know for sure.

When I graduated from high school in 1983, I was a happy go lucky teenager with a steady boy friend and many friends. My first year of college was great. I had a lot of fun and thought I had made so many new friends. Joe (boyfriend then, now my husband) left for Marine Corps Boot Camp in the spring of 1984. That was hard but I adjusted fine and was glad to see him come home that summer. In the fall when it was time to go back to school I was a different person. I withdrew from my friends and I pretty much kept to myself. After a weekend visit from Joe, I slipped into a deep depression. I stopped going to class and to work. My so-called friends didn’t want anything to do with me. I started having headaches and dizzy spells. I was really scared. No one knew what I was feeling or would even try to understand. I ended up dropping out of school and went back home. I didn’t want a job; I just stayed home and did baby-sitting jobs. My nephew was born in August of 1985 and I took care of him full time until Joe and I was married in June of 1986.

On our wedding day I cried all through the picture taking. I was very happy but cried anyway. We went to the Blue Ridge Mountains for our honeymoon, I got stung by a bee, got a speeding ticket, and we had no air conditioning in our truck. It was truly one to remember. We came back and moved to North Carolina, where Joe was stationed at the time, and I cried for the next 2 weeks. I had never been that far away from home before.

As a child I had a bad case of asthma and now all of a sudden I’m having no problems. Little did I know that my body was treating itself with cortisol. In Jan. of 1987 I had a doctor’s appointment with my Allergist.

I was told then that I had High Blood pressure and to keep check on it. I was also beginning to be very emotional around this time. I would cry over nothing.

I started having migraine headaches while Joe was away on a deployment. My parents came and took me to the ER and because I had not been able to eat for 3 days and I was living in the dark because the sunlight was killing my head. Again I was told that it was High Blood pressure. Joe came home and left again in June for 6 months on the ship. I moved home and didn’t have any problems that summer. I moved back to Carolina in the fall so that I could get our house ready for Joe’s home coming. The real nerve racking part was that Joe’s ship was part of the mine sweeping going on in the Persian Gulf during 1987.

1988 was a pretty good year. Not too many problems except for headaches. But 1989 is a different story. I fell apart this year. In the spring I broke out in this strange rash that wouldn’t go away and I couldn’t find a doctor that could tell me what it was. Not long after that my periods stopped, we were really excited thinking that we were finally going to have a baby, WRONG! I went 3 months without a cycle; I still had the rash, headaches and high blood pressure. You would think that this would have alerted my OB GYN that something was wrong. Joe came home one day and found me doubled over and took me to the ER and we found out that I had kidney stones. Over all this time I am steady gaining weight. The stones passed and then tests were done and everything was fine there. Finally I decided to go to see Dermatology for the rash and was treated for severe acne. On my second visit with them the doctor took a look at my entire medical record and excused himself from the room. A few minutes later he returned with a doctor from Internal medicine, he took one look at me and said that I was the classic Cushing’s case. Then he went on to explain it to me. This was in Nov.1989. The tests began and I had a CT Scan done in Dec of that year that I didn’t get the results from until after Christmas. They showed a tumor on the pituitary and I was told to go to Portsmouth Naval Hospital right away. We took off and headed to Virginia not knowing what to expect. I was admitted the next day and had a week of peeing in a jug and lots of bloodwork. I was sent home with my surgery scheduled for Feb. 1990. Well, being the Navy, my surgeon was called away and my surgery was delayed until March.

I had transphenoidal surgery in March 1990 and they removed what they could but it had invaded the sinus cavity and they couldn’t get it all. I was sent home on hydrocortizone and had 2 episodes where my cortisol levels dropped too low and had to go the ER. Once I was weaned off I was okay and actually felt pretty good. I had monthly 24-hour urine tests run and they began to come back high again. I was put back in the hospital in Portsmouth and all the tests came back normal. I was sent home and a couple of months later they were high again. Again I went to the hospital and sent home normal. What’s going on here? The next time this happened I demanded that something be done. The head of the Endo dept. (I won’t mention any names, but Handiman knows him personally) tried to tell me that I was faking it so that my husband wouldn’t have to go the Desert Storm. I talked on of the interns to schedule me for an appt with the radiation oncologist and they determined that the tumor was still growing and that I needed to have radiation. Joe was scheduled to go to the desert but he was pulled from that duty and assigned to recruiter’s asst. and we moved to Virginia to my parent’s home for 60 days while I underwent 31 days of traditional radiation to the pituitary. I went back to Carolina feeling more at ease that something had been done. The rash went away but I continued to gain weight and still had Blood pressure problem, but was now being treated for it.

I was doing really well and Joe went away again for 6 months in Oct.1991. He was gone that Christmas, which was hard but I handled it ok. When he returned he had orders to go to Atlanta, GA. I was doing well and we packed up and went. I didn’t like the endo I saw there so I continued my 6-month check ups in Portsmouth when went home to visit.

In the summer of 1994, I started having problems with my left eye and thought it was allergies. I went to the eye doctor and after examining me he sent me to a Neuro Ophthalmologist who ordered a MRI and guess what The Tumor’s back! It was pressing on the optic nerve causing what they called a third nerve palsy. I was treated with medication until Jan 1995, hoping that the tumor would shrink but it got worse. I began to have double vision and my left eye closed completely. In the spring of 95 I again underwent Transphenoidal surgery at Emory University under Dr. Oyesiku. He was great. I also had a great endo there, Dr. Lewis Blevins (he is at Vanderbilt in Tenn. Now). They still could not retract the entire tumor so I went back in August of that year and had Sterotactic Radiation Surgery. That was a one time radiation and it was a real experience. I had a metal Halo drilled into my head and I had CT scans and MRIs done with it one to determine the exact location of the tumor, then I was placed in a chair that spun in very slow circles while the radiation was being done. When I arrived back in my room they couldn’t find the key to take the halo off, so I had to wear it for another 2 hours until they found it.

It has now been almost 6 years since the last radiation and my current MRIs show some shrinkage of the tumor. I am currently battling high cortisol levels again but I think if we can find the right dosage of medicine it will level off. I am currently taking meds for: thyroid, high blood pressure, estrogen, diabetes, medication to control cortisol, allergy medication and every 3 months I take hormones to make me have a menstrual cycle. But over all I am doing OK.

My husband is out of the Marine Corps now and we live in Maryland. We are in the process of Adopting. We are really excited about this and can hardly wait to get our little one. My husband and Family have been so supportive of me through all of these years and I don’t know what I would have done without them and my close friends.

I feel like I have made many friends here also. This site has been a great help to me and I hope that my story can help someone else.

Take Care everyone!

Natalie

MaryO Note: Natalie had a BLA in March, 2008. She died April 21, 2008.
In Memoriam

Natalie Fay

Monday, April 21, 2008

2001 Cushing’s Lunch. From
left: Joe (Natalie’s husband), Natalie and Linda

Natalie Fay (Natalie65), died April 21, 2008. She was only 42 and had recently had a BLA. I first
met Natalie at a local lunch in November of 2001 and have seen her seval times
since then.

Natalie started the original “Dammit Dolls” that circulated
around the country until people refused to pass them along anymore.

Dammit Doll.

Natalie also made counted cross-stitch
Cushing’s Awareness Pins:

Natalie’s bio… http://www.cushings-help.com/natalies_story.htm

Some recent past
posts.

February 10, 2008

going to UVA I am going for my first visit with Dr. Hanks at
UVA on the 20th. I will also see Dr. Vance that day. I haven’t seen her before
either. I am planning on having bilateral adrenal surgery in March. I am a
little nervous about this, but it is going to be a positive thing I hope. I
would love to hear from anyone who has had this done so that I will have an idea
of what to expect. after surgery.

Thanks! Natalie

March 18, 2008

surgery update Hey everyone!

I’m back! It has been a
very slow week and I’m just satrting to feel like moving around again. I had BLA
on the 10th and came home on friday. My parents have taken my boys (3 & 6)
home to Va. I have missed them so much this week, but I think it was the right
thing to do. I don’t know how I would have done it without them. I am still very
sore and tired at times, but I’m coming along. Sorry this has taken so long to
get out to you guys, I thought things were taken care of but I was wrong. Oh
Well! I’m doing good and I’ll keep in touch. Thanks for all of your thoughts and
prayers.

Natalie

Message Board Signature:

pit surgery 1990
traditional 30 days
radiation 1990
pit surgery 1995
sterotactic radiation surgery 1995
2004
still have remaining tumor
cortisol levels still off balance
BLA March 10,
2008

Tributes and Memories on the message boards…

Our first local DC area Cushie lunch November 17, 2001 with Linda, Jayne, me and Natalie – all in Cushe Colors [Photographer: Robin]

Our first local DC area Cushie lunch November 17, 2001 with Jayne, Linda, Natalie, MaryO and Dianne [Photographer: Robin]

Our first local DC area Cushie lunch November 17, 2001 with Jayne, Linda, Natalie, MaryO and Dianne [Photographer: TomO]

Our second local DC area Cushie lunch February 9, 2002 all the families [Photographer: Robin]

Our second local DC area Cushie lunch February 9, 2002 with Jayne, Marcia, Heather, Natalie and MaryO [Photographer: Robin]

Our second local DC area Cushie lunch February 9, 2002 with Jayne, Marcia, Heather, Natalie and MaryO. LynneInVa made the roses for us from candles. [Photographer: Robin]

Our next local DC area Cushie lunch May 4, 2002 with lots of us! [Photographer: Robin]

Our next local DC area Cushie lunch May 4, 2002 with Pat, MaryO, Ruth, Natalie, Susan, Jayne [Photographer: TomO]

Our next local DC area Cushie lunch May 4, 2002 with Pat, MaryO, Ruth, Natalie, Susan, Jayne [Photographer: Robin]

Our next local DC area Cushie lunch May 4, 2002 with Joe, Jed and Catherine [Photographer: Robin]

Our three families: Tom and MaryO, Natalie and Joe, Robin and Jayne…and kids [Photographer: a waitress]

TomO being silly, stealing Catherine’s nose. [Photographer: Robin]

http://www.wrightfuneralhome.org/index.cfm

Natalie Grissom Fay
(June 11, 1965 – April 21, 2008)

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Courtland, Virginia– Natalie Grissom Fay, 42, passed away April 21, 2008 at St. Mary’s Hospital in Leonardtown, Md. She was born in Petersburg, Va, a daughter of Edward Scott and Nan Lucy Grissom and was a 1983 graduate of Southampton High School. Natalie actively supported several Cushing Support Groups, and was a member of the Patuxent Presbyterian Church. Surviving in addition to her parents is her husband, Joseph P. Fay; two sons, Joseph Edward (Jed) Fay and Nathan Lee Fay all of Hollywood, Md.; one sister, Annette G. Stephenson of Courtland, Va.; two nephews, Scott and Vance Stephenson; and her father-in-law, Edward K. Fay and wife, Sunee, of Deltona, Fl. The funeral will be conducted at 2 pm Friday at Wright Funeral Home with the Rev. Edmund Ellis officiating. Burial will follow in Riverside Cemetery. The family will receive friends from 7 to 9 pm Thursday at the home of Edward and Nan Grissom, 16046 Wakefield Road, Courtland, and suggest that in lieu of flowers, memorials may be made to Cushings Help, c/o Mary O’Connor, 4094 Majestic Lane, #328, Fairfax, Va. 22033.

In Memory of Natalie Fay ~ April 21, 2008

April 21, 2020