Me and Hashi, we met years ago and I must admit we are still learning to get along. You can read about my journey towards diagnosis, beginning here and many more rantings about this miserable dying gland of mine sprinkled throughout my blog:)
I hate butterflies…and it’s all because of a spooty gland in my neck, often described as ‘butterfly shaped’ called Thyroid.
ugly little butterfly
My Immune system started attacking my Thyroid gland, and as more and more of Thyroid’s cells died off, the gland became more and more useless at it’s job of regulating almost every freaking thing in my body. This is called Hashimoto’s Autoimmune disease, Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis or Hashimoto’s Thyroid Disease. You can read more about it here.
Personally, I think of Hashi’s disease in two parts:
- Autoimmune disease – this is the attack on my thyroid, which flares up when any stress is put on my immune system. It seems as though my immune system is so damn busy trying to kill my thyroid that it has difficulty fighting off anything else. I get sick often, take longer to recover and longer to heal. Stress, sleep and diet play a big part in how well my immune system functions, any added pressure weakens my defences.
- Thyroid disease – as my thyroid suffers relentless attacks from my misguided immune system, more and more of its cells die off and it becomes less able to produce the hormones it ought to. This causes a whole host of symptoms throughout the body and can be life-threatening. Fortunately hormone replacement is available to greatly reduce the symptoms of the Thyroid disease. And I say greatly reduce because no amount of replacement thyroxine can do the exact same job as a fully functioning gland, and sadly the Thyroid gland cells never return, leaving the bodily functions to be evermore sluggish and imperfect. Before diagnosis, my symptoms had got to the point of unbearable and I felt as though I was going crazy. Now, my thyroid levels are ‘within the normal range’ due to a daily dose of Thyroxine, though I still suffer from sluggishness – both physically and mentally as well as a host of weirdy type symptoms.
