A woman who has one of the world’s worst cases of gigantism has stopped growing for the first in more than a decade, RadarOnline.com is reporting.
At 21, Tanya Angus was 5 feet 8 inches tall and a slender 130 pounds. But within a year she had grown three inches and in 2002 she was diagnosed with acromegaly – more commonly known as gigantism.
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Today she is 7 feet tall and weighs a staggering 400 pounds.
For years, despite three surgeries and radiation treatments, Tanya’s health worsened and she became the only gigantism patient whose growth could not be stopped.
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But this month, for the first time in 10 years the 33-year-old has stopped growing after her mom spearheaded experimental doses in her medication.
Tanya, who could barely walk because of her size, told ABC News: “This is such good news.”
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Caused by a non-cancerous tumor on the pituitary gland, gigantism is a disease that affects just 20,000 people in the US. and it can be life-threatening.
A couple of years ago, Tanya said, “I live every day in pain that’s excruciating.”
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She could only get relief in a swimming pool, saying: “This is the only place, the only time I feel no pain. It feels so liberating.”
“My heart’s enlarged,” she has said, facing her plight wiht amazing courage. “Everything in my body is enlarged…Sometimes, yeah, I get really down about it. But to me the most important thing is that I have to tell the people.”
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Now the news is exciting for both Tanya and her family. At one point she was taking up to 20 pills a day.
“For the first time ever Tanya’s blood level for her disease has fit in the normal range,” Tanya’s mom, Karen Strutynski, says.
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If a secondary blood test confirms the results, Tanya can plan for a de-bulking surgery.
You can read more about Tanya on her website.
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