pituitary gland, shanna...its the master gland and controls every other gland in your body. the impression i've gotten is that if they decide it is necessary to remove the whole thing, then i'll have to have complete hormone replacement therapy (cortisol, estrogen, prolactin, leutenizing hormone, follicle stimulating hormone, growth hormone, thyroid, etc.)

if they could pinpoint a part that was causing problems or a tumor, then they could likely just remove that, but the problem is that my entire gland is enlarged and inflamed. so i don't know :\ but seriously, i imagine complete hormone replacement will suck so much ass until we figured it out better.