It took me bloody 10 months to feel like I'm back to the good ol' me. Sorts of.* 10 months of taking thyroid blocking medication, and later on synthetic thyroid hormones. And that was when my symptoms weren't as severe as those of other thyroid patients. Or at least, that's what I try to believe. Or maybe I'm just not as much of a complainer compared to other patients.
I might just love you. Really. I was taking a break from studying (seriously, sometimes I just want to run away from med school and spend the rest of my days lazing around beneath a palm tree, drinking yummy cocktails and ogling pretty handsome guys..), and I decided to spend some time on Tumblr.
My Graves' Disease isn't making things easy for me at the moment - med school is hard enough even without a chronic illness to drag you down, but add the constant alertness for any signs of an infection*, depression, body image issues and everything that comes hand-in-hand with Graves' Disease, and you're in for a rough ride.
Word got out that one of the major producers of levothyroxine (thyroid hormone, more specifically, synthetic FT4) is unable to produce enough medication for the Dutch thyroid patients here. This is because the pharmaceutical company is hauling ass; ergo nothing will be produced for a while. There's going to be a shortage of Thyrax tablets with a dosage of 25ug starting February this year. The other dosages, 100ug and 150ug, will probably run out somewhere around June. [Insert a lot of panic among my fellow thyroid patients.] I lucked out and got my dosage increased from 3x25ug to 1x100ug, so I still have a personal stash of +- 3months lying around, with chances that I will have enough pills to last me until the summer.
A lot of my fellow patients are now attempting to hoard the last amounts of Thyrax now. Some of them are even attempting to hoard a year's supply. Shame on you, really. No one really enjoys having a thyroid disease. Everyone is going to suffer from being forced to switch to another brand. Eventually, you'll have to switch to another brand as well. So please don't hog.
My first thought when I heard about patients attempting to hoard a year's supply of Thyrax: DAMN, YOU GREEDY HAMSTERS!
I HATE MY THYROID! I HATE THIS FUCKING DISEASE! Why is it giving me hair loss and making me feel like I could go berserk in a split second?! I feel psychotic without the psychotic break! Hell, call me shallow, but I absolutely do not like it when my hair is getting so thin that I might pass as an unhealthy hobo. Stupid thyroid, stupid pills. Don't give me extremely unpleasant-and-ridiculous symptoms which aren't dangerous enough for me to stop. Either don't give me those stupid symptoms and shut up, or give me some dangerous side-effect so that I can switch therapies. Or die.
Random person: "You're hyperthyroid? Oh, lucky you.. You're losing weight and looking skinny without even having to work for it.. I want to have hyperthyroidism too!"
That moment when your doctor tells you your Free Thyroxine (FT4) used to be over 100 pmol/L*. The resident treating me couldn't tell me how much, actually. Probably because the lab techs ragequit after they reached a count of 100.
How am I still alive and sane?
* Normal ranges: Anywhere between 8 and 24 or so. 100 is ridiculous.
Hey guys! It's been a while since I last posted something here, so I thought I'd pop in and show that I'm still alive.. My thyroid gland has calmed down a lot by now, and the sudden mood swings and murderous thoughts and moods are slowly dissipating by now. Which is great!
I'm taking meds to freeze my thyroid gland in it tracks, to make sure it doesn't produce anymore thyroid hormone, as well as meds to push my heart rate back down. The problem is that my meds can wither away my white blood cells - leaving me with a lacking defense against bacteria and the likes. Thats why my endo explicitly ordered me to go to my hospital to get my blood checked anytime I get a fever, sore throat or the likes.
The funny thing about this situation is that I'm more likely to stand up for myself. The less funny thing is that I'm more likely to use violence in doing so.
A few days ago, I posted about me diagnosing myself with hyperthyroidism, cause unknown as of then. It was Graves' Disease, also called Graves-Basedow, because those two people described the disease a long time ago.
It's essentially an auto-immune disease where my body thinks something fishy is going on and decides to create antibodies to something. This 'something' isn't known yet, but the antibodies stimulate my thyroid gland so that it creates more thyroid hormone than is necessary. When my endocrinologist called me, I already had an inkling as to why my thyroid was going into overdrive. Graves disease is the most common cause for hyperthyroidism, and since I couldn't be all too special, I had to have some common things as well, right? We had discussed my chances of having Graves Disease during our first appointment and came to an agreement that it was.. well. Quite high.
Did I tell you guys how happy I get when I make the right diagnosis? I get very smug and I'll wear a smug smirk on my face for the rest of the day if I get one right.
