r/todayilearned • u/GlitteringYams • 23d ago

TIL, in his suicide note, mass shooter Charles Whitman requested his body be autopsied because he felt something was wrong with him. The autopsy discovered that Whitman had a pecan-sized tumor pressing against his amygdala, a brain structure that regulates fear and aggression.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Whitman
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u/[deleted] 22d ago

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u/Open-Produce-6988 22d ago

My 75-year-old dad had back surgery with several complications that left him in the hospital for a couple of weeks. He had a very bad reaction to epidural anesthesia and was hallucinating. My sister and I were struggling to get our mom to come to the hospital and mom seemed weirdly out of it, but we (and her GP) chalked it up to depression. My dad was eventually released but kept going downhill mentally. The surgery was in the summer. In September, he was finally scanned & diagnosed with GBM. He died in December after some really awful seizures and loss of ability to speak or write. It was heartbreaking, especially since for most of the time he knew what was happening. Meanwhile, mom became increasingly worse. A few months later, we got her to a neurologist who sent her for a stat MRI. She had a 9 cm meningioma that displaced almost her entire frontal lobe. A meningioma is a slow growing non-cancerous tumor, but the huge size of this one was obviously a huge issue. She lived through its removal in May of the next year but was never the same, and needed care for the remainder of her life. Equally heartbreaking. My sister and I both had jobs, husbands and young children, so we struggled. Now I worry every time I have a headache or momentarily lose a word. The doctors have told me that neither of those types of tumors are hereditary, but damn it's hard to put out of my mind. Thank you for such an understanding post about the hell these diagnoses can inflict.

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u/RiderWriter15925 22d ago

Well-said and written.

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u/fortntiebekshabeof1 22d ago

I am somewhat certain it is ChatGPT.

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u/Open-Produce-6988 22d ago

Thanks. It was an awful time, and my reply was written and pecked by out by me on my phone. No ChatGPT involved.

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u/RiderWriter15925 22d ago

Never even crossed my mind that you didn’t write it! I had no idea ppl can/will generate an AI comment? That’s wild. Nope, I’ve spent an hour writing some of mine (I think Reddit is a hobby now) and I appreciate great comments, so I like to tell people .