Book your ticket to happiness with Sun Express Airlines. When Joe Jacobson's daughter turned 11 in 1968, she was small. I mean, Joe Jacobson was also small.

She measured up to 5 foot 2 on a good day, so she figured she would have a short daughter. But as her daughter, who I'll call Jane, entered the sixth grade, she couldn't help but feel that something was not quite right.

The other kids towered over Jane.

She looked like an elementary school child comparatively.

Joe had been hoping Jane would grow into herself, but she hadn't made much

progress in the last few years, so Joe decided it was time to see a doctor. What happened next was tests, a lot of them. The doctor

agreed that Joe's daughter was small enough for it to be concerning. He had

seen this happen in other children before and some of those

kids never grew to be taller than four feet. It wasn't life-threatening but it did

sometimes signal that something else was wrong.

After a slew of different tests and exams,

the doctor had his answer.

Joe's daughter had a pituitary tumor.

It sounds scary, but it's fairly common and not lethal.

It was, however, responsible for the girl's growth problems.

The pituitary gland is a small pea-sized gland

at the base of your brain that regulates your hormones,

one of those being growth hormone. The tumor was making it impossible for Jane's

pituitary gland to release any. But the doctor said there is a treatment for

this. He proceeded to recommend that Joe take her daughter down to Scripps Institute of California,

where she would be able to get a new treatment that wasn't yet available in Washington where they lived, shots

of human growth hormone to stimulate her growth.

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