Lisa Mosely: A Blessing in Disguise
Sean Michael Mosely II was born on May 6, 2014.
A year earlier, on May 8, his mother, Lisa Mosely, was
in the operating room with a neurosurgical team led
by Dong Kim, M.D., director of the Memorial Hermann
Mischer Neuroscience Institute at the Texas Medical
Center. The surgical plan: to remove a large pituitary
adenoma that was pressing on her optic nerve.
Mosely’s path to the OR was marked by a series of
fortuitous twists and turns. “My husband and I decided
we wanted to have kids,” says the 30-year-old Kingwood,
Texas, resident. “We had everything in place – good
jobs and a nice house. We wanted to get a not-too-late
start with our first child.”
Mosely stopped taking birth control pills, but her period
never returned and she started lactating – symptoms
that continued for three months. When blood work
done by her OB/GYN showed highly elevated prolactin
levels, he referred her to a reproductive endocrinologist.
“My prolactin levels were as high as a woman who
was pregnant,” Mosely says. “I couldn’t get pregnant
because my body believed it already was pregnant.”
The endocrinologist prescribed cabergoline, an oral
medication used to treat high prolactin levels. When
Mosely’s prolactin levels remained high on medication,
the specialist suspected a pituitary tumor and ordered
an MRI.
Meeting the Doctor
“My endocrinologist was very concerned about the
radiologist’s report,” she says. “When it revealed a large
tumor that contained a significant amount of blood, she
referred me to Dr. Kim. I was really nervous, but he put
me at ease and I liked him immediately. ‘Don’t worry,’
he told me. ‘You’ll be having kids in no time.’”
Dr. Kim scheduled surgery within two weeks of Mosely’s
office visit. He used a minimally invasive transnasal
approach, and the complex procedure progressed like
clockwork.
The Experience
“It was a really easy surgery for me,” she says. “I had
a lot of energy and was back at work eight days later.
Three months after my surgery, I found out I was
pregnant. Along the way, I was told that normally
you wouldn’t find a tumor like mine unless you had
symptoms. I believe that having a baby saved my
vision. Had I stayed on birth control pills, we might not
have found the tumor until it damaged my optic nerve.
“Finding the tumor and having it treated so quickly – and
then getting pregnant – was a very neat experience,” she
adds. “I’ve had other medical issues in the past but
have never experienced this level of attention, care and
concern. Dr. Kim makes you feel like you’re the most
important patient he has.”
“Seeing our patients do well is very special to us as
physicians,” says Dr. Kim, who is professor and chair
of the Vivian L. Smith Department of Neurosurgery at
UTHealth Medical School. “Patients remind me every
day why I became a doctor in the first place.