Tanya Angus, a beautiful 21-year-old who rode horses, danced and had a boyfriend, one day noticed changes in her 5-foot-8-inch frame: Her shoes didn’t quite fit, her jeans were too tight and her hands got bigger.
“She was perfectly normal, but by age 22 she had grown three inches,” said her mother, Karen Strutynski of Las Vegas, Nevada. “Nobody knew what was going on.”
Angus, who lived in Michigan and was a supervisor at a Walmart, began to worry when even her face and head got larger. Her bosses also noticed — and fired her. And her boyfriend left when his parents began to ask, “Is she a man?”
Tanya decided to return home in 2002. When her sister picked her up at the airport, she “freaked out,” because she didn’t recognize Tanya.
The doctor took one look and diagnosed acromegaly, also known as gigantism, caused by a tumor in her brain that is pushing on her pituitary gland, causing it to produce an excess of growth hormone.
Today, at 31, Angus is 6-feet 11-inches tall and has ballooned from 135 to 372 pounds.
“I don’t know how to explain how it is, being a giant,” Tanya told ABC’s affiliate KTNV. “I put my shoes on in the morning, I’m like, ‘Ugh, gosh they’re growing again. I’m growing again.'”
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