Mood🤷🏼‍♀️

I haven’t written in what seems like forever. Not sure I even want to post this. I’m coming off of a hard few years.  Ive learned I haven’t properly dealt with many things in my life and lately it’s finally catching up to me. I’m just plain wore out. 

I used to think that I was just lazy. I honestly began to think I was losing my mind. Now I’ve come to learn that Hypothyroidism has much to do with it, probably a touch of the lovely thing called menopause and maybe a smidge of unresolved grief.

In 2012 I was diagnosed with hypothyroidism. They started me on levothyroxine. I went faithfully to the dr every 3 weeks getting my levels checked to make sure I was on the correct dosage. In the fall of 2012 we moved up north to a new home, new job and new lifestyle. I felt great. So great in fact that I decided to stop taking my medicine cold turkey. I don’t recommend this. I had a new life insurance physical & my cholesterol had gone down significantly since the move, I lost weight, I was healthier. So I justified stopping my meds. 

Slowly as the years went by I started noticing different things. I felt lazy. I felt tired. I was irritable. I was always cold-always. My hair was falling out. My skin was dry. I was constipated. I went through mild bouts of depression. I had major mood swings. My body ached. I started to gain weight despite eating right. Extreme fatigue. Irregular heartbeats. Forgetful- I’d forget my damn head if it wasn’t attached. Brain fog. The list is endless. I just didn’t feel right. 

I thought I had the  faith to get through anything. It’s a very hard to cling to faith & believe when symptoms are becoming more present. It’s hard to ignore symptoms. Soon I found myself doubting. I let the feeling of the symptoms overcome my beliefs. That was probably my first mistake toward the endless path of not feeling better. 

So on the outside it would appear that I was lazy and had no ambition. On the inside I was fighting a battle no one understands unless you’ve experienced it. No one understood how I could fall asleep on the couch watching tv, go to bed and be asleep when my head hit the pillow and wake up exhausted. But then the next night I’d be wide awake and not be able to sleep at all-getting maybe two hours of sleep and not missing it. No one understands that I cannot explain why I feel like I’m crazy, why I’m not me, why I can’t “just change”, why I can’t just make up my mind to not be this way. I can’t. I can’t even make sense of it to myself-how can I make anyone else understand. It seems easy to sit back and say “Hello, you’re kinda wrecking your life here by how you’re acting, best change that.” But what happens when you KNOW things need to change but your mind won’t let you “figure it all out”?

This past fall of 2016 after watching my dear Gram go through many health issues I finally decided to go in for a physical. Against all I wanted to do or believed in I went. I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt she was going to tell me it was my thyroid. 

What I didn’t expect was that I’d have an EKG that same day because she noticed heart palpitations, or that it would be abnormal. I didn’t expect that my potassium, magnesium, sodium and iron would all be off as well. I knew my thyroid levels would be off but no clue they’d be at almost 8. I had no clue I’d leave that day going from taking no pills to needing to buy a pill box. I had no clue I’d start that nasty trek of going to the dr every three weeks again to have my levels checked only to find that every time they’d still be off. And I certainly had not expected the toll it would all take on me emotionally. 

I’m still doctoring, doing labs and trying to manage my medications. Something is still way off. For a brief moment I started to feel better and then at my next lab appt things were off again. I’m feeling worse now than when this all started. My mood has taken such a nasty turn.  

It’s hard to feel. I want to feel but I just don’t. Funny that I actually WANTED this at one point. I was so tired of all the stress and crap I was going through that I actually wished for a day to just not feel. Well it happened. I hadn’t cried since December 7. The day of my Grams funeral. I couldn’t cry. Not a happy tear, sad tear, mad tear-nothing. Emotions of all sorts were absent. I was a flat line. Then one day I cried. Over what? No clue. Just a few tears came out. I still believe I have this HUGE reservoir of tears that are just waiting to come out.

I’ve been researching and have learned a lot about the treatment of hypothyroidism and that not all cases should be treated the same. That levothyroxine isn’t the end all be all. That “normal” levels do not mean “optimum” levels. That TSH testing is not the only test that should be done.  Also learning so many symptoms overlap each other. I don’t feel old enough to be dealing with menopause but I may as well wake up and realize it’s coming. 

 In the meantime, I try to get back on track-cut this, don’t eat that, try this, don’t do that….I await the day I get “normal” lab results and maybe some answers. So much expense- so annoying-

I do understand things could always be worse and people are battling far bigger things than I. If you managed to stick around through my little hissy fit I appreciate it and thank you! 

Just over it – peace
✌️