Tell Me, Dear Thyroid, Is Our Issue, Nature or Nurture?

Dear Thyroid,

**sigh**  Where do I start?  Okay, it’s not your fault.  I know that, and I don’t blame you.  I blame United Nuclear Corporation for contaminating our drinking water with uranium decay isotopes from their mine and then not telling anyone about it for seven years.  I’m so sorry, I didn’t know!  I didn’t mean to kill you by drinking and bathing in radioactive water for so long.  It just happened.  You may not be the only one to go… only time will tell.  You’re lucky, our sister Heather’s thyroid got it worse than you.  And our Mom got breast cancer.  What else may come along?  I don’t really want to know…

I’m not angry about it, or angry with you.  I never was.  It was something that just happened when we were a kid.  And that was 20 years ago anyway.  Mostly I just wished you worked properly again and that I felt like I used to.  I don’t really feel like a whole person anymore when I think about it.  I feel like a car without gas.  I may look shiny on the outside and have all glass and metal and rubber and chrome, but I just can’t “go”.  And what good is a car that can’t “go”.  A smashed-up jalopy with gas is better than a million-dollar sports car with an empty tank.  My tank feels empty all the time now.

I do get frustrated about some things, though. Like, all the literature and medical research out there is geared toward menopausal women.  I’m not menopausal.  I’m not a woman.  Please someone tell me how to deal with irritable male syndrome!  I get frustrated that my thyroid needs vary seasonally and I’m constantly needing adjustments.  I’m surprised my doctor hasn’t just given up already.  You used to take care of that perfectly, but now you cannot.  I’m not even sure if you actually produce small amounts of something still, or none at all, although I have my suspicions that you’re not 100% dead.  Whatever part of you is left, keep on going!  You can do it, even if you can’t do it all.  Every natural bit helps.  Mostly I get frustrated knowing that the well-being of the rest of my life is dependent on a pill for the 50 years.

Sometimes I feel sad when I remember I was an sharp, active, trim young man and then that winter when I was 26 and just I felt very blah all the time and my doctor made an unusual discovery in my blood tests.  And I feel sad when I think back on the last 10 years as I dwindled down to couch potato lethargy, brain fog, and expanding outward by 30 percent.  I feel even sadder when my brain says “Yes, we can be like that again!” and then when it comes down to it my body says “No, no we can’t; I’m too tired.”

So, anyway, I’m glad you’re still there, even if you’re probably not working at all.  At least the doctor’s haven’t seen fit to remove you and leave me with a frightening scar across my neck.  I’m scary enough to little children as it is.  And even if there was absolutely nothing I could have done about it at the time, I’m sorry I subjected you to a radioactive environment that killed you.  You trusted me to take care of my whole body, and I trusted the world to take care of me.  At least our parents did the best they could, but the rest of the world did not.

(Bio) Michael is 36 years old and was diagnosed with hypothyroidism at age 26, which is highly unusual for a male that age.  He works as a cartographer and is working on his M.S. degree.  He used to enjoy many things, but now spends most of his time resting resting resting. You can read more about Michael at his website.

A Thynundrum Indeed

Dear Thyroid,

I’ve been so angry at you these past few years – ever since you turned on me.  I thought we were close.  I thought we were looking out for each other.  Then you started holding back.  You stopped giving me what I needed from you.  Of course, I thought it was just me.  I thought I was going crazy.  Then I found out it was all you!

But now I realize it wasn’t just you.  In fact, it’s not even your fault.  You’ve been suffering as well, dear thyroid.  I’m sorry I didn’t see that sooner.  I had no idea you were being attacked daily by my immune system.  It must be so hard on you. I wish you could speak to me and tell me why this started happening to you.  Is it something I ate?  Is it something I did?  Is it something in the world around me that I should get rid of?  I want to know what it is, but our doctor doesn’t really seem to care about you.  He tells me there is nothing that can be done – that you are going to slowly die from these assaults.  He says I can live without you.  All I need to to do is take a little blue pill every day for the rest of my life.

I DON’T WANT TO TAKE A FREAKING PILL!  I WANT YOU TO LIVE!  I WANT YOU TO BE HEALTHY!! I WANT TO BE HEALTHY!!

We’re in this together, thyroid.  The doctors don’t care.  They don’t care WHY this is happening.  All they know is it’s easier to give us a pill and tell us to go away than to work with us on finding a solution.  It’s going to be up to us to figure this out.  Here’s what I’m doing s far.  You tell me if any of this is working:

I’m reducing stress in my life. I’m taking time to meditate and relax.
I’m getting more sleep so you can regain your strength.
I’m exercising.
I’m eating more organic foods.
I’m taking supplements to give you and the rest of my body what it needs to stay healthy.

I’m working with an acupuncturist and holistic practitioner who sees our problem as a whole body issue, not as isolated things. I’m trying to find others who are in the same situation to see if they have any advice or have had any success. I’m talking to my gut to find out if they are allergic to gluten.  I’ve been reading how gluten can upset the gut, and when the gut gets upset, it bothers the immune systems, which can then turn around and attack you, dear thyroid. 

All I ask is that you let me know if anything I am doing is helping.  We’ll get through this.

Love ya!

Matt

(Bio)  I’m 41 years old and live in Los Angeles, CA.  I was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis about 3-1/2 years ago.

You Don’t Gland A Chance!

Dear Thyroid,

Did my last letter really encourage you that much?  If so, then rock on!  I say this because I feel like you’ve kicked it up a bit; that little bit of you that still works, is still working a little bit more, perhaps. And, I think you’ve been doing pretty well lately. Maybe it’s the summertime. What organ wouldn’t love summer?  Okay, okay, so the skin doesn’t…. not without SPF 1,000,000, but the rest of us have been pretty happy lately.

Yes, Brain has been clear, and can recognize people, perform arithmetic, and knows where it is all the time. Mood has been stable and generally amicable. There have been no days or weeks in recent memory of Irritable Male Syndrome with its fits of uncontrollable object-smashing rage and wanting to go all STABBITTY on people, and then squish their gooey insides through our tightly clenched fingers. Yes, days have been good.

So good in fact, that yesterday we all were a bit horny.  Mr. Mister down there was actually in the mood to go poking around for once.  How long has it been now since that happened?  … Well, I’ve forgotten, too.

This here brings up a problem.  If Mr. Mister wants the hokey pokey, the rest of us are going to have to tidy up a bit.  Chop, chop!  There’s work to do.  Let me preface this by saying much of this isn’t your fault.  No, it’s mom’s fault for passing on certain genes from her side of the family.  But really, do you have to make my hair and skin, and fingernails grow so fast lately?  That’s another reason I know you’ve kicked it up a bit. My fingernails grew one-eighth of an inch just in the last 6 days!  I have to trim my beard every other day to keep from looking like Z. Z. Top.  And there’s hair everywhere because you’re growing it faster than I can handle it.  I have hair growing in places I didn’t even know I had skin. Trust me when I say, the “Big Hairy Man” look went out of style in the early 1980’s.  Besides, all this “wolfing out” makes me feel itchy.  That’s enough to give me Irritable Male Syndrome itself.

So, I don’t know…. what’s it going to be for me?  Feeling great, but looking like a gorilla and being self-conscious about it?  Or, looking good and knowing I look good, but being too “blah” to do anything?  Why won’t you let me have my cake and eat it, too?

—(Bio) Mike is 36 years old, and has suffered thyroid disease for more than 10 years now.  He used to be active, but mostly he just rests too much.  He’s the only male he knows with thyroid disease, but his older sister has it too (worse than him). Find out more about Mike by hitting his website.

Graves Becomes HIM

Dear Thyroid,

I was diagnosed with Graves’ disease at age 52.  I’m entirely clear that not treating it would have been a big mistake.  But I’ve never been quite the same, and I don’t know if it’s fallout from the treatment or something else.

Reading the Dear thyroid posts I guess I really lucked out. Things didn’t go so bad with you. A few years ago the doctor said my blood pressure was high, and said first try improved diet and exercise.  Which seemed to work, but then it went up again.  While discussing this with him I mentioned that I had a lot of energy and didn’t need much sleep, and was feeling unusually good.  So he checked my thyroid and it was high, so off I went to a very busy endocrinologist who saw me three months later.

Since my symptoms weren’t that bad yet, he did a lot of tests.  I’d say this was a good thing, given I wasn’t that bad.  However several months later, my Graves’ had progressed to where it was no longer a case of feeling good without sleeping.  Life became organized around bowel movements and I began to have a lot of anxiety while losing weight on an hourly basis.  Along came the miracle of I131.

Well something didn’t get adequately explained to me and I postponed my second post I131 blood test.  By the time I wandered into my endocrinologist’s office, he took one look at me and asked why I hadn’t called him since I obviously must be feeling pretty terrible.  Which I was, feeling terrible.  I was turning into someone I didn’t recognize, someone who hurt all the time, everywhere.  Someone who screamed insanely at the kids when I could find the energy to do so, someone who would go outside expecting the thermometer to say it was below zero only to see that the stream behind our house was frozen solid and the thermometer would read a totally preposterous 30 degrees, and the stream would be gurgling happily.  All I could do was sit by the fire and eat peanut butter.  You see the rest of my body thought with just a little more of the food that kept body and soul together when I was hyperthyroid, that it might find the energy to do something.  But you wouldn’t listen.  You couldn’t, since the I131 had killed you.  Sometimes I feel bad about that, I really do.  Killing part of my body with a medicine that the nurse told me not to remove from the bottle till he had left the room…. But, it was better than what you were going to do to me. And you gave me a nice vacation.  My wife said that she wasn’t going to clean up radioactive pee off the floor when I went to the bathroom in the middle of the night, and sent me off to a nice little cabin in the woods for a few days.

Well, as I said, the doctor took one look at me and yelled at me for not being more assertive about how terrible I must be feeling.  He then proceeded to worry about over medicating me with the result that I was under medicated for about 6 months, although not terribly so.  I suppose he was being cautious….usually a good thing in a doctor I suppose.

To give him his proper’s it was his secretary who kept telling me that he was too busy.  One day, as I was arguing with her over my follow up appointment, he overheard and came out and told her to schedule me for his lunch break, to which she reluctantly agreed.  I do in fact believe that he was just over worked.

Eventually I switched endos and she agreed with the first one, that I shouldn’t blame the thyroid for everything.  In general, I like her, too.  She did a slew of other tests and said that basically the problem isn’t my thyroid but osteoarthritis in my knees which seems to have a ripple effect.  But….

Things have never been the same since the I131.  I think it’s just a case of a pill not working as well as my own thyroid did (when it worked). I tried the T3, which made me spacey and I hated it.  Based on that, I decided not to bother with the Armour.  She was happy to prescribe it, just like she recommended the T3, but said she thought most of her patients who like the Armour, just like the T3 buzz.  Who knows?

So, I don’t need to write hate letters to my thyroid, although I wish I could feel the way I was when I was 25 years younger.  Don’t we all?  But I read the “I hate you, thyroid” stuff and reacted viscerally.  And I’m going to vent about your buddy, osteoarthritis because that’s how I feel about your evil friend.  My hobby used to be mountain climbing.  Now in my mid 50’s, I go to the gym and I can walk around the block most days. I think about it all the time, especially when it doesn’t hurt, because then I have to remember a million things NOT to do in order to keep it from hurting. I read my daughters fashion magazines and they will talk about which body part you dislike the most.  A total no brainer for me.  I hate my knee with a deep undying passion.  I hate it as much as some of the folks here hate their thyroid gland.  In a few years I’m going to get a new one, but the doctor says to wait.  I figure when the surgeon says don’t operate, I should listen, but I hate this. My typing fails me, trying to say just how much I hate it. And even with new knee, the days of 40 lb packs and 4 day hikes are over.  So are the kill or be killed bad mitten games I used to have with my daughters, and a whole slew of other things. Same feelings, different disease.  A little piece of a torn meniscus changed my life as profoundly as almost anything else that has happened to me.

Zari – 

(Bio) I’m a 56 year old man who had a relatively uneventful life, medically speaking, until about age 50.  I do have a serious drug problem, namely alcoholism, but I was fortunate enough to get sober in my late 20’s and stay that way with the help of a 12 step program.  Got married, had kids, life went pretty well. I was always very physical, lots of hiking camping, used to run 6 miles a day and so on. Truth is, my life is pretty good.  Probably my real problem is not the thyroid or the arthritis, but the general alcoholic personality that will find a resentment and cause for self pity in a heartbeat, which doesn’t negate the fact that these medical problems were in fact draining.