Another Significant Personal Milestone for 2005

During the month of November, I will “celebrate” the 13th anniversary of the radiating of my thyroid. Diagnosed in 1993 with Grave’s Disease, the method of choice to correct the problem was to expose it to enough radiation to calm it down, but hopefully not kill it completely. However, the phaser was set on “kill” not “stun” and within three months I had developed a bizarre constellation of symptoms that no one had prepared me for. At first I was just losing my mind, but then I began losing my hair, and finally my balance. The day that I walked down the hall in my house by pushing myself off one wall to the other, I knew something was really wrong.

My Christmas gift in 1993 was to find out that I would have to be placed on thyroid replacement hormones the rest of my life. Because figuring out just how much hormone is needed requires the trial and error method, and because giving too much too soon can cause a heart attack, this began a three year journey through hell to get the dosage up high enough to make me feel human again. My weight went up, my eyes had double vision, my hair fell out in handfuls and to top it all off, during all this I became aware of certain activities being pursued by my then-husband – activities that would lead to our eventual divorce when I got my head back on.

Since that time, I’ve educated myself about the condition I had and the treatment I received. I’ve left behind the first doctor who treated me because of his “take-a-pill-you’ll- be-fine” attitude. I’ve learned that coping with a radiated, non-functioning thyroid is a guessing game, and that the thyroid, the virtual thermostat of the body, controls many vital functions, including things you would never associate.

It turns out that the irritable bowel syndrome I have had since high school could have been an early sign. The fibromyalgia that I have developed in the past ten years is also most likely related. Within the last year, I began taking an additional form of thyroid hormone (T-3 for those of you keeping score) because of my intense fatigue, sleep disturbances, muscle spasms and pain. It turns out I have been suffering all these symptoms because endocrinologists and drug makers have been fighting for years over whether a thyroid patient needs both T-4 and T-3 replacements, and whether blood tests revealing thyroid hormone resistance should be considered part of the “protocol.”

So, this year, I celebrate lucky anniversary #13 still battling pain and fatigue, but hopefully there are no more surprise symptoms in store!