The northlondonhippy

Archive for November 27th, 2008

Since receiv­ing my diag­no­sis of Hashmimoto’s Dis­ease and writ­ing about it here, the word “Hashimoto” is appear­ing with greater and greater fre­quency, in var­i­ous forms in the list of search terms plugged into Google that get you to my site.

Don’t worry, “northlon­don­hippy” remains the num­ber one search term that finds me. I’m a proper online destination.

But very high up on the list, sits Dr. Hashimoto. Con­sid­er­ing the first time I ever heard of it was as it passed over my doctor’s lips pre­ceded by the words “you have…”, I’m some­what sur­prised at how com­mon it is.

It seems quite a few of you out there in inter­net­land have Hashimoto’s Dis­ease too, or at least you think you do.

Peo­ple search for symp­toms, search for cures, search for clues on how to live with this auto-immune disease.

I’m far from an expert, hav­ing only known of my own con­di­tion for sev­eral months, but I have been dis­cov­er­ing loads of peo­ple I know who have thy­roid problems.

Every­one wants to know what “your dose” is.

“What’s your dose?”, they all say to me, look­ing vis­i­bly dis­ap­pointed when I tell them I am cur­rently on a pal­try 50 micro­grams of levothy­rox­ine, com­pared to their 150–200 micro­gram dose.

Its true my dose is cur­rently low, but that is about to change, again. My GP is mon­i­tor­ing my thy­roid lev­els at reg­u­lar inter­vals and increas­ing my dose grad­u­ally. The key, he says, is to find the low­est ther­a­peu­tic dose, because too much can cause dif­fer­ent prob­lems. I’m due for another blood test next week and I would expect my dose to go up again as soon as I receive the results.

With me, I didn’t know I had a prob­lem for quite a while, I ignored or dis­missed all the symp­toms I now know I had. It wasn’t until my back seized up and my legs gave out that it dawned on me I might have a health problem.

Clever, eh? I had heart pal­pi­ta­tions, breath­less­ness, nau­sea, dizzi­ness, no appetite, no energy, aching joints and a slow heart beat and I just thought it was just the nor­mal age­ing process catch­ing up to me.

My doc­tor assures me that all of this is very treat­able and once my dosage is cor­rect, I will feel like my old self again. I’ve felt crappy for so long, I’m not sure what that really means.

So if you’re already diag­nosed, just be patient. Give the med­ica­tion time to even you out, just like I am.

And if you think you have Hashimoto’s, just go see a doc­tor and you are a sim­ple blood test away from diag­no­sis and treatment.

And if it turns out you don’t have Hashimoto’s Dis­ease, per­haps this arti­cle in today’s New York Times, might give you pause for thought.