Five days

It's been five days since I got my diagnosis. Not even a full week, and yet it feels like it's been forever. In some ways, that is.

I've been fighting these symptoms for years. I am in the process of looking back, cataloging, reliving. I am in the process of piecing together what turns out to be a very clear path to this diagnosis, including all the little off-shoots of doctor dismissal, distraction, and dissuasion. I am a bit mortified, really, and angry with myself for accepting for so long that I didn't know my body best. It's long been my tendency to turn my body over to others whom I thought knew better than I did about how my body responds. I accepted direction regarding what I should look like, what I should weigh, how I should wear makeup, how I should dress, how I should exercise, when I should rest. I accepted that whatever I was eating, even if I wasn't actually eating anything at that precise moment, was bad for me and something I should never consume again, and I should rightly follow the direction of other people because they knew better than I did.

I followed low fat. I followed low calorie. I followed manic cardio. I followed conventional wisdom, even when it was painfully obvious that my body responded well to precisely none of it. Even when, if I had been honest with myself and accepted what my body was trying desperately to communicate to me, it was very apparent that my body was actually deteriorating under what I was trying to force it to become. I labored under the delusion that other people knew best, and I was just not applying myself diligently enough. It's appalling to me, looking back, that I accepted so much outside interference in what should be our most deeply personal, private experience. And I've paid for that interference with years of self doubt and deteriorating health that have brought me here.

"Here" feels at once triumphant and overwhelming. I knew something was wrong. I knew the numbers didn't add up, and as diligently as I tried to apply all the advice and suggestions I should have been getting much more of a response out of my body. I knew, as a clinician trained in gathering and interpreting physical response data, that something wasn't adding up. And yet the amount of time I spent trying to "try harder" has dug me further into the hole, and I'm so deep in that I can barely see the light of the sky far above me. The task of unearthing myself seems huge, no pun intended. It seems like too much. Too many steps, too many change. Nothing one person can do.

Good lord, it's almost April

It's been one hell of a year so far.

So January was essentially lost to the influenza virus. I've never had the flu before, and I tell you--the flu is no joke. Everyone who says they "have the flu" when they just have a bad cold doesn't realize how much they are tempting fate. I spent four weeks trying to recover, and all the way into mid February just trying to return to my regular schedule.

In February, I caught another cold. Well, damn. This one was a cold and not another bout of the flu, but since I hadn't fully recovered I was smacked down again.

This brings us to March. I've been trying repeatedly to get back to the box and get back to healthy eating, and I've been severely exhausted. I finally gave up on getting help from my regular doctors and went outside my health insurance to a holistic practitioner. I saw him on a friday night, and without even running tests he looked at me and said he was 90% certain I had a thyroid condition. But, in the interest of corroborating evidence, he ordered a whole slew of blood tests and gave me some supplements and directions to follow until we got the results back.

Supplements, I could do. I was already taking iron per my neurologist to help with headaches and migraines, prescribed because he discovered that my ferritin levels were....8 (range 12-150). I was already taking D3 per my endocrinologist, prescribed because my D3 was...12 (range 65-85). He added vitamin B12 and L-tryptophan to help with sleep, and L-theanine (green tea extract) to boost my metabolism. He also wanted me on a quarter grain (16.25 micrograms) of Nature Throid, a natural thyroid supplement. So I've got a nice little pile of pills to take right now along with my regular allergy and asthma medications and inhalers. Sigh. Getting old sucks.

But anyway.

The diet I gave up on before I tried it. I have to admit, I was just done. I was so frustrated and so burned out on putting energy into fighting an invisible foe that I just ate what I wanted. I try to be gluten free and I have for about 8 years now, well before it was a popular concept, because I have long known that gluten and wheat tear me up. But when I'm disheartened and frustrated and hopeless I don't care how bad my body feels. I just couldn't fight anymore.

So the last two and a half weeks have been careless. I own it, I admit it. I've been feeling really run down, and I felt hopeless.

Then I got a call from Dr. Joe.

He told me that he had numbers for me, and they were a good and bad thing.

TGAb, an anti-thyroid autoimmune marker, should be less than zero. Mine was 44.

TPO, another anti-thyroid autoimmune marker, should be less than 8. Mine was 52.

FreeT3 and T4 were both "low normal". TSH was high.

Estradiol was high.

Vitamin D, when I already take a 5000IU supplement every day, was 35. It should be above 65, and Dr. Joe would like to see mine closer to 85.

He told me that this all points to the autoimmune disease called Hashimoto's Thyroiditis. My own immune system is attacking my thyroid, and causing havoc throughout the metabolic systems in my body.

My headaches? Hashi's symptom.
Constantly cold? Hashi's symptom.
Dry skin? Hashi's.
Acid reflux no matter what food is eaten? Hashi's.
Thinning hair? Hashi's.
Brain fog? Hashi's.
Low body temperature? Hashi's.
Chronic respiratory issues? Hashi's.
Depression and bouts of mania? Hashi's.
Trouble sleeping? Hashi's.
Sudden rapid weight gain with no change in habits? Hashi's.
Difficulty losing weight in spite of good habits? Hashi's.

All the things I've noticed going wrong that I've just accepted and dealt with, or individual doctors have addressed without looking for an overarching cause...yeah. Hashi's symptoms. ALL OF THEM. Reading through the available information was like reading about my own life. Were they watching me? Was I being filmed? Was I being set up?

Dr. Joe was afraid he was giving me bad news and he repeatedly told me not to panic, that we'd get me set on a program to tackle this and get me feeling better at our next appointment. I didn't have a chance to explain to him that I'M NOT UPSET. I'm THRILLED. I have been fighting these little things, separately, for years. I have known, for years, that something is not right. The math does not work. Something in my body is going wrong, and I've tried repeatedly to get someone to help me diagnose what's going on. I'm thrilled to pieces to actually have an answer, and having such a well-known and well-studied answer (Hashi's was the first autoimmune disorder ever discovered) makes me feel fantastic. Now that I know what I'm fighting, and I'm not being blamed for eating too much or blindly told that I need to exercise more, I can fight. I can fell a known enemy.

I can do the diet. It's not much different from Whole30, honestly. I can do that. I can do exercise, once I get my energy back. I can stick with this because I know what I'm fighting and why I'm doing it. I also have the missing piece, the attention to the actual thyroid hormone and the other supplements I need, all being monitored as I progress. I can DO this.

I'm ready to get better.