I heard this on the radio and it’s been stuck in my head for 4 days now.
February 2010
One-Five-Nine (No Kidding)
You've got to be kidding me.
About 15 years ago, I went to my doctor and complained bitterly about brain fog, fatigue and general malaise. I was sure it was my thyroid. And sure enough it was.
As a child, I had been hyper-thyroid. Apparently, children as young as I was don’t develop thyroid problems at the age of 9. They’re either born with them (and often die before diagnosed) or it just doesn’t happen until later in life. Not only was I hyperthyroid, I was extremely so and had a goiter big enough to double as a softball. I’m in medical journals. There was no real protocol for treating children and I was a research hospital’s guinea pig. They did not want to remove the thyroid for a host of reasons. I endured weekly (and sometimes twice weekly) medical appointments and testing for the better part of two years.
The treatment was successful, but my parents were warned that I may never undergo puberty and might never have children. Well. I did undergo puberty – in spades – though I attribute my lack of cleavage to after-effects of massive doses of thyroid hormones. [Every woman on both sides of my family is very well-endowed to the point where breast reduction surgery is often undertaken. I’m a standout oddity.] I also have Chef Boy ‘R Mine as witness to my childbearing abilities.
I’d been complaining, 20 years ago, that something wasn’t right with my thyroid. For the first time in my life, I could pinch an inch. I couldn’t get enough sleep, etc. etc. I kept testing in the normal range. I tried to explain to them that although I wasn’t medicated, I had been somewhat hyperthyroid since I quit taking the meds when I was 10. I was on a downward slope, but I had no street cred with the docs and they couldn’t have cared less what I thought. Low normal was still normal – never mind that I’d been slightly hyper for years.
Fifteen years ago, I persuaded them to do the full thyroid panel and sure enough I was hypothyroid.
The full panel of thyroid tests reveals all sorts of things, but for people with my diagnosis – Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis – the TSH number is the important one. 3.0 is considered the upper range of normal. Most docs don’t like for folks to get below 0.5 to 1.0 or above 5.0. I don’t recall what that first TSH number was – pretty big. I TOLD them I felt awful; I still don’t know why they were so surprised.
So. That was my second real indication that I’m pretty in tune with my body – the first was sensing that Chef Boy ‘R Mine was fixin’ to be a miscarriage before there were any real signs. I know when things are wrong.
Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis is an autoimmune disease of the thyroid. A simple explanation is that my thyroid thinks it is allergic to itself and keeps trying to commit suicide. Even missing my meds for just a day can provoke mayhem and carnage. Even medicated, periodic adjustments are required. A few years ago, I felt like crap and developed a goiter. I called the doc. My TSH was 39 –yes 39. Thirty-nine times the upper range of normal. He was astonished. I’d only missed three or four days of my meds.
The amount of Synthroid I take boggles the mind of my hypothyroid friends. Hypothyroidism is epidemic among women in this country. The last I heard, it was estimated that 40% of American women are hypothyroid with most of them undiagnosed. Since Oprah got diagnosed, I imagine that a few more are insisting their doctors run the thyroid panel. But regular hypothyroidism is not the same as Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis. Look at it like this – there’s the common cold and then there’s bronchitis.
So, over the years, my thyroid acts up, I feel like crap, and I call the doctor. I’m always right and they no longer argue with me. We run the tests, we up the Synthroid, and off I go on my merry way.
Tired? I should be comatose.
I’ve been sleeping a lot lately, but I haven’t had brain fog and I don’t have a goiter. It’s been a cold, yucky winter and my stress levels are THIS HIGH. [Connie holds her hand two feet above her head.] I’m very in tune with my body and nothing was on my radar.
The family practitioner insisted we run a thyroid panel. I was opposed. I thought it unnecessary testing that would end up costing me a couple hundred dollars. We argued, she won. She also ran my cholesterol.
Well. My cholesterol is in the “needs medication” column and my TSH is, no shit, ONE HUNDRED FIFTY-NINE. One Five Nine. That’s 5300% higher than it should be.
Well, shit-fire, no wonder I’m tired. I should be near comatose based on past experience.
I’m inclined to think something went awry with this test. With a TSH of 39, I could barely get out of bed, every spot of arthritis in my body was screaming, my skin was so dry I was a cloud of dead skin cells, and I was thoroughly miserable. I was also unable to remember anything. At a 39 TSH, my world was wallpapered with sticky notes lest I forget something. No kidding, I had sticky notes to remind me to do stuff you wouldn’t think needed reminders. I had “brush teeth” on the medicine cabinet and “go to work” on the steering wheel of the car. I would forget what I was doing in the middle of doing it.
It was awful. If I do, in fact, have a TSH of 159, I should be too bumfuzzled and confoozled to type this much less actually awake at 8 p.m. The only hesitation with dismissing it out of hand is that my cholesterol is high. Traditionally, my cholesterol numbers are good when my thyroid is functioning well. Hypothyroidism correlates with high cholesterol. Many folk find that when they’re properly medicated for thyroid problems, high cholesterol problems go away.
So. Today I read that menopause is suspected to interfere with the body’s ability to process Synthroid. Upon reading that, I threw up my hands and ran amok in the hallways for awhile. Menopause’s unbloody hands appear to affect every facet of my life. I’m tired of it. And I’m tired. And I have a TSH of 159.
I’m still functioning and for that I’m grateful. I’m much too busy to crawl into bed for the 4-6 weeks it will take to get things up to speed.
If you know a woman who’s tired of being tired, suggest she get her thyroid checked. There’s no need to be miserable. Until they figure out why all of us womenfolk are having this problem, there’s not much to be done for it other than get a diagnosis and some prescriptions. (And if you have been diagnosed and medicated, but still feel like crap, get your B12 serum levels checked – B12 deficiency goes hand-in-hand with thyroid problems.)
Home Again
Home again, home again, jiggidy jig.
Today was a commuting adventure. It started when I couldn’t get the car door open for the ice encasing the car. It continued with not being able to get the tires unencased from the ice that was a snowy mud driveway just yesterday. The adventures accelerated as I did sliding down the hill (shiny side up, headlights more or less forward) in neutral with my foot poised over the break brake (Freudian typo?) And it all ended with news that even the 4x4s couldn’t get up or down the hill which meant that I wasn’t just walking the hill, which I expected, but that I was walking up by way of the old barn.
The old barn route is longer, but a far more picturesque route – unfortunately all I had with me was the cell phone camera. The evening constitutional was as pleasant as circumstances allowed – the backwoods teeming with deer. The neighbor’s German shepherd kept me company. It was kind of peaceful – pity the windchill kept me from coming in here, grabbing the camera, and returning to that long and winding road.
Woman who runs with the dogs.
Run, Dee, Run!
Dee over at Tangled Up in Sticks and String mentioned she’s entered a 5K race.
I’m not sure if I’m jealous, awed, or guilt-ridden.
The idea of “racing” appalls me, but I like the idea of running IN THEORY. It’s the actual running part that stops me (in my tracks or on the track?).
In the early 70s when the running/jogging craze was sweeping the country, I went out for track. I was a fairly normal, hormonally volatile, meaner ‘n snake 13-year-old. [Most of the previous sentence is redundant. All 13-year-old girls are hormonally volatile and mean.]
I was never much of one for group activities, but something about running appealed to me even at that age. Pity the track coach ruined it. My life might have been completely different had she believed in water.
In the southern-most part of North Carolina, late August/early September was brutally hot and so humid a body needed gills to process oxygen. This was girls track season.
My best friend and I showed up for try-outs not knowing that just showing up guaranteed a spot. That first day we were given a 10 minute pep talk and sent out to run laps under a sun beaming 98 degrees to ante up with the 98% humidity level. This was before decent athletic shoes were a norm and during the unfortunate time period when expert wisdom decreed that drinking water before or during running would provoke Big Problems.
About the fifth time around the quarter-mile track, I was dying. This was before cigarettes, sloth, hedonism and general laziness had taken its toll. I was healthy, bright-eyed, very active, and had a fair amount of muscle for my long and lanky frame. 98 F at 98% can annihilate even the most dedicated of athletes which I surely was not. I gave it another week. Each day was the same: pep talk followed by laps. I wanted to die.
I dropped out of track – one of the first (of many) failures in my life. It never really ate at me much. For years, I’d roll my eyes and decree “Running is not for me” any time the subject came up.
Ten or so years later, the Ex and I started dating. He liked to run. He wanted company. I agreed to give it another shot. I’d been doing high impact aerobics for a year and figured I could handle a jog. I went. I ran. I sat down. Hedonism, sloth, and cigarettes trumped the Jane Fonda Workout and running was simply torturous – and if all that wasn’t bad enough, I was still trying to do this in K-Mart Blue Light Special tennis shoes.
Along came Chef Boy ‘R Mine and by the time he entered high school, he’d taken up running. The kid was a running fool. He was on the track team and the cross country team. He ran in the fall. He ran in the spring. He ran at school and at home. When he was running on his own time, he used to take our dachshund with him. She ran every mile with him – usually two to every one of his (investigating smells and whatnot).
His cross country days appealed to me. I could see the attraction in that – track and field events like sprints and relays just bored my innards into paralysis. Ah, but cross country. . .I can feel the wind in my hair, my legs pumping like a well-oiled machine, blood coursing, and water – lots of water. I envision the dogs and I running through the Appalachian hills singing songs from the Sound of Music, our hearts beating as one, our lungs breathing in and out to the hum of the Universal Om, yada yada. In short, the four of us working in tandem to provide a goofy scene of health, vitality, and eccentricity. [Really, who runs with a dachshund, a shih tzu and an Italian greyhound?]
Running BY water could be the motivation I need.
The water thing has provoked me into thinking maybe I should give it another go. It seems the Running Experts are now unanimous in thinking that water before, during, and after running Might Not Be a Bad Idea. Hell, they even make a thing, I think it’s called a Camel Back, to strap on your back and suck water out of while running. (That seems way too Navy Seal for me, but it proves my point.)
Of course, I’m putting a lot of faith in water to keep the whole experience from being another failure, but collapsed on the ground somewhere will have to go better if I’m at least hydrated. Right?
I probably won’t take up running, but I still like the idea of it. I could get some cute shorts and one of those spiffy combo bra/tank top thingies and some wicked cool running shoes. I can stand around and stretch, sipping water, and talk to the dogs while checking my resting heart rate (I don’t know why they do that, but presumably it’s important.) Until summer, I’ll need an even spiffier warm up suit – one without a hood (I hate hoods). Maybe red laces for my shoes. And a bumper sticker – Woman who runs with the dogs. Something like that.
Y’all know I’m not going to do this. But I like the idea of running. IN THEORY.
W. Va. Fur and Root 