…diagnosis!!

Kids are at school and i finally woke up with some beans today! Not ‘full of beans’ exactly but definitely more beans than i’ve been having lately :) tonsillitis has almost cleared up – without antibiotics! So aside from trying to clean every inch of the house, i thought i’d also take the opportunity to write some more.

2007 – the year everything started making sense!

By this time my symptoms were really kicking in and messing with me on a daily basis.

I found it increasingly difficult to stay awake for long periods of time, despite sleeping 10-12 hours (more if i could) at night. I was even falling asleep suddenly if i sat still too long like while i was eating. I would often wake up to find i had been sleeping with my head on the table at dinner time and the girls had just contentedly gone on eating, or cleared the table and moved on, leaving me to wake in a cloud of confusion. I would also (and still sometimes do) wake up to find myself on the floor with hours gone past, I’d just be so suddenly overcome with exhaustion that i had to drop on the spot, no time to find a bed or even a comfy pillow! When i felt tired i would also be flooded with this terrible feeling of gloom and distress that is very difficult to describe which would make me very weepy and emotional.

I was still getting sick often and having flu-like symptoms even when i wasn’t ‘sick’. My body would ache, my muscles hurt, my joints were very sore and i felt like a little old woman. I moved awkwardly and slowly, it felt as though my body would not co-operate and I could no longer do the things I used to. Getting showered and dressed took forever and would exhaust me so that i felt like i could (and sometimes did) go back to bed and sleep for hours just to recover. Things like washing my hair or hanging washing felt like i’d just done a massive workout and most times i would have to sit down and have a rest half way through. The walk to school each day would completely drain me and i would then rest for most of the day in preparation for pick up time in the afternoon. I was doing just the bare minimum to get by: buying groceries, washing clothes and dishes and cooking basic meals. I tried to keep up with all the activities I used to provide for Titch while Lil was at school all day, but i was finding it difficult to stay awake through games and stories. I even stopped reading the girl’s their bedtime stories because I’d fall asleep before they did! Lil was a great help at this time, just as she was when titchy was born and we brought her home from hospital all on our own, we’re a good team like that;) Lil would read stories for me and both girls were good with helping out around the house.

Hashi’s has such a lot of weird and wonky symptoms, it’s impossible to think of them all now. It took getting better to realise just how many things were going  wrong in my body. My metabolism grinding to a halt was not only slowing the physical processes in my body but the mental processes too. I described my days as feeling like i was walking through a thick fog, long before i was diagnosed or had even heard of Thyroid ‘brain fog’. Some days were better than others but bad days felt like i was lost in a fog, it took a looong time for me to think, to process thoughts, to see and perceive things clearly, to make decisions and even to form sentences or words. Sometimes i could think of exactly what i wanted to say but when i went to speak just a babble or a sound came out…the message had not reached my brain to form the words (makes you feel pretty stoopid) Getting ideas down on paper was difficult and i was very easily distracted and confused.

It is extremely difficult to describe extreme fatigue to someone who has never experienced it. I remember once getting up the courage to mention to my dad that it seemed ‘abnormal’ how tired i felt all the time. He assured me that everyone feels tired, every morning at work people would come in moaning and complaining about how tired they felt and that you just had to get on with life. I felt like if the way i was feeling was ‘life’ and as good as it got, then maybe i didn’t want it anymore. I wanted to go to sleep and never wake up, not unless it was with a full quota of energy for the things i wanted to do! I can also remember thinking early on ‘i have some sort of disease and one day someone will realise it, if i just stay patient and keep seeing the doctors one day they’ll figure it out’ but i kept this thought to myself and by 2007 was completely convinced that the only disease i had was a mental illness. I was sure that i was going crazy, that i was a failure at life and went to great lengths to cover this up from other people. I became distant and reclusive, didn’t like going to my kids school or spending time with friends or family in case my secret was revealed. I was terrified of falling asleep or bursting into tears in front of somebody and being found out. I wore a social ‘mask’  so that everyone would think i was still cheery happy loving caring me, but if i was in the company of others for too long, i couldn’t maintain the pretense and would start to feel sleepy, brain-dead and just want to go home to bed.

it was early may that i had what i thought was some sort of nervous breakdown, was so fed up with feeling nothing and wanting just to sleep my life away, I started to cry and just could not stop, I was still crying as i cooked dinner for my children that night.I knew i needed help. I phoned and made an appointment with my doctor and counsellor but couldn’t see either of them for 2 weeks.

May 16 – Doc recommends the anti-depressant Zoloft again. I agreed to fill the prescription this time but only if she could please test first for anything PHYSICAL that could be causing these kinds of symptoms. A few days later I got the phone call that my results were back and that my Thyroid was Underactive, could I please make an appointment to come in and talk with Doc about this.

HOORAY – I’M NOT CRAZY!!!

May 31 2007 – Doc explains to me that I have “Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis” an Autoimmune disease that prevents the thyroid from working properly. I will have blood tests again in 6 weeks to see if it is getting worse or better (i’m under the impression that it can go away on it’s own at this stage HaHa) 6 more weeks of feeling like crap:(

August 10 2007 – My 6 week check showed Thyroid function was rubbish and Thyroid antibody count rising rapidly – Finally a prescription for Thyroxine!!