Thursday, July 22, 2010

Help Me Fight Colon Cancer!

http://www.firstgiving.com/lindsayatherton

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

My Life Is Good...

It is. It's really good. I'm blessed in so many ways. And recently, several people who are really important to me have received really, incredibly good news about various things, and that brings me more joy than I can express.

I have a job I love (at last), I get to spend my days with my little man, who continually fascinates and delights me. I have a warm, loving and incredibly supportive husband who takes care of me in ways I have dreamed about my whole life.

And yet (there had to be an "and yet" didn't there?), I feel...not quite right, somehow. I'm guessing the aforementioned thyroid issue is a big contributor. But I also think there's more to it. The thing about working in a job that made me miserable was that it was a really easy thing to blame any stray misery on. "Oh, I'm unhappy because I hate my job." Now that that's no longer the case, it is becoming increasingly clear to me that...something is just a little off. So, back to the drawing board, in terms of finding the root of the issue. Wish me luck!

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Not So in Tune

I have thyroid disease. I was initially diagnosed with Graves' Disease at 16. It became so erratic and hard to control with medication that my doctors decided to neutralize my thyroid using radioactive iodine when I was 20. Since then, I have been on Synthetic Thyroid of various sorts and various doses. And the pattern, historically, has been that every couple years, I would discover that my dose wasn't quite cutting it, and it'd be increased. After I had Benj, my dose didn't change, and my doctor was really surprised, because apparently, that isn't typical...although, my symptoms and experience with thyroid disease as a whole have been pretty a-typical. I went last week, and discovered that my dose is too HIGH (this is a first) and I'm actually technically hyperthyroid (which, again, I haven't been since around age 19).

As soon as I got this news from my doctor, it was like, "OF COURSE!" This explains SO, SO many of the symptoms and feelings I've been having for actually quite a while now. The anxiety, the sleep loss, the weird appetite...I could go on. And I felt like such a DOLT for not picking up on it earlier. I remember these feelings so well from my teen years, and yet I failed to connect the dots. I was so much more in tune with my body back then. Then, life happened and other things took precedence and I completely missed the red flags.

But it's a relief to have something to point at, of that much I'm certain.