A 25-year-old lady has revealed that she was not born with a disorder that has hampered her growth, but rather developed it at an early age.
Shauna Rae, who had always been significantly smaller than her friends and family, received a diagnosis of pituitary dwarfism at the age of 16.
“I’m 22 years old, yet my height is 3 feet 10 inches, and I weigh roughly 50 pounds.” I live my life trapped in the body of an eight-year-old,” Pittsburgh-born Rae told a TLC TV team in 2022.
It was her reality program, I Am Shauna Rae, that provided viewers a glimpse into her life and how she manages to complete daily activities while maintaining the appearance of an elementary school student.
Rae detailed why and how she got pituitary dwarfism, which causes children to be shorter than predicted while having ‘normal’ body proportions.
She explained, “When I was six months old, my mother spotted a bulge in the back of my skull and took me to the doctor, who diagnosed it as a tumor—a highly aggressive malignant tumor.
“I had urgent surgery, followed by two to three years of treatment before being declared cancer-free. When I was about five years old and in kindergarten, they realized that every other child was much taller than me.”
Unfortunately, the tumor that had formed in her brain had impaired her growth hormones.
Rae went on to say, “There’s at least a foot difference between me and these other kids. That’s when they took me back to the children’s hospital and discovered that my pituitary gland was almost dormant.”
So all of my hormones, my growth hormones, my sweat glands, all of that produce much slower, and I started taking growth hormones, but the doctor told me I was done growing. My bones resisted at 16, so I didn’t realize I wouldn’t be normal until I was 16.
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“That moment was almost like the world shattered..
While some sites have stated that Rae is stuck’ in an eight-year-old’s body, citing a comment in which she claims she lives her life ‘locked in the body of an eight-year-old,’ she has subsequently clarified that she isn’t.
Rae took to TikTok and said, “I think it’s actually very inaccurate.” I am not trapped in the body of an eight-year-old; rather, I am a 23-year-old woman whose body is 23 years old.
“It’s matured; it’s gone through puberty, like I’ve grown in areas that eight-year-olds don’t until they hit puberty, which is later in life, so therefore I’m not in the body of an eight-year-old; I am just a shorter-statured woman.”