Pheochromocytoma on TV

I have a voice message from my second husband Ron saved on my phone.

He left it a few years back, before dementia completely took over his mind and before he went into the nursing home (the photo below was before COVID).

I was suprised that, when he'd forgotten so much, he remembered this. Here is the message.

"Just heard something I wasn't expecting on TV. He (Hawkeye) was trying to get hold of his dad. He heard his Dad was sick. He finally got through and some other guy asked him, 'How are you doing?"

And he said, Hawkeye said, "Well, they found some kind of a tumor. They're not sure what it was. So they opened him and found it was a pheochromocytoma."

Then Ron said, "Whoa! I know what that means."

I did a quick Google search before I finished this post just to see how often this very rare tumor has appeared in the media, but I could only find the two references: one that Ron caught, and one that I caught.

Here is a clip of the episode Ron saw. The mention of pheochromocytoma is at the the 11:30 mark.

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6tnwg1

Pheochromocytoma is also the second disease mentioned in the "Top 5 Rarest Diseases | House M.D."

However, we did laugh our way through this episode about a prisoner who gets strong and aggressive due to excess adrenalin.

It's not like that. All those excessive catecholamines make you sick, sick, sick. You won't have enough energy to pick fights.

Still, it was cool that it got a mention on House M.D. - with even the other "doctors" on the show coming back with, "But it's rare."

That's what the doctors told me when I told them I thought I had one. My comeback was, "Someone has to have it."

That someone was me.

Which is how Ron knew about it. I'm still thankful today that I tracked my symptoms and shared my findings with the right doctor (several before him did not believe me when I said I had this). 

Pheochromocytomas are rare but treacherous catecholamine-producing tumors that, if not diagnosed or appropriately treated, will almost invariably prove fatal.

Here is a link from the House M.D. episode.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZVd0QKvJo8