The northlondonhippy

Six months ago I was diag­nosed with Hashimoto’s Dis­ease, oth­er­wise known as Chronic Thy­roidi­tis. At the time I didn’t really grasp the sig­nif­i­cance or seri­ous­ness of my diagnosis.

I do now.

I’ve prob­a­bly had this stu­pid dis­ease for a while, longer than I’ve known. I had symp­toms that I didn’t know were symp­toms for at least a year prior to being told of the cause.

I just thought I was get­ting old.

I am get­ting old, but age was not caus­ing my prob­lems, my use­less thy­roid was…and is.

I’m still not well. I find myself say­ing that a lot lately, in response to peo­ple ask­ing me why I look tired, or pale.

I’ve been under­go­ing treat­ment for Hashimoto’s since my diag­no­sis. Treat­ment comes in the form of a small pill taken daily to replace the thy­roid hor­mone my body no longer manufactures.

The side effects caused by the pills are very sim­i­lar to the symp­toms of the dis­ease. I get heart pal­pi­ta­tions, breath­less­ness, headaches, dizzi­ness, light-headedness and these get worse every time the dosage is raised.

The dosage gets raised every cou­ple of months as I am still not on a ther­a­peu­ti­cally effec­tive level yet. I started out on 25mg, then went to 50mg and now I am on 100mg of Levothy­rox­ine. Its about to be raised again, prob­a­bly to 150mg, though I am await­ing for the results of a blood test for confirmation.

Lately, extreme exhaus­tion and lethargy have been added to the mix. I con­stantly crave sleep, but I don’t sleep deeply or for very long. I get phys­i­cally tired very eas­ily and don’t have any of my usual stamina.

My nor­mal walk to my local high­street used to take me well under 10 min­utes, it now takes me closer to 15 and the return jour­ney is stretch­ing to the 20 minute mark.

I’m hav­ing con­cen­tra­tion prob­lems too. “Brain fog” is another symp­tom and there’s a real pea-souper in my head most of the time. I find it dif­fi­cult pay­ing atten­tion to peo­ple when they tell me any­thing com­plex, my mind wan­ders and I am eas­ily dis­tracted. The same is true of my read­ing com­pre­hen­sion, if a para­graph drags on too long, as this one seems to be doing, I for­get what it says.

I get waves of nau­sea, my appetite vac­il­lates between hav­ing none at all, to sud­denly being rav­en­ous and I’ve been hav­ing mood swings too.

All of this sucks the big one in a very real, demon­stra­ble way and I am tired of it.

To com­pli­cate mat­ters, I haven’t been hav­ing much fun with the NHS.

My GP referred me to a spe­cial­ist and after wait­ing months for an appoint­ment, I ended up leav­ing the clinic with­out see­ing the con­sul­tant endocri­nol­o­gist. The clinic was over­sub­scribed, there weren’t any seats in the wait­ing room, the nurses were surly and rude and after wait­ing way too long, I left.

I did receive a let­ter of apol­ogy from the con­sul­tant for my poor treat­ment, but that is a small con­so­la­tion. The entire expe­ri­ence left me with a bad taste in my mouth and no desire to ever return to that clinic.

It gets even worse, my reg­u­lar GP, who I have been see­ing for nearly a dozen years has been hav­ing health prob­lems of his own. He’s cut back his hours and for the last sev­eral weeks, I’ve been unable to see him. I finally gave up and saw the surgery’s senior partner.

The senior part­ner imme­di­ately said she would take over man­ag­ing my care, which makes me think my reg­u­lar doc­tor won’t be back full time any time soon.

Being sick seems to be hard work and I worry if I ever had some­thing seri­ously big wrong with me that I wouldn’t have the patience to fight my way through the sys­tem to get the treat­ment I would need to survive.

And speak­ing of sur­vival, peo­ple can and do die from Hashimoto’s Dis­ease. One of the things it does to you is weaken your heart and one can suf­fer from heart fail­ure. I’m not say­ing that’s what I am head­ing for, but quite often it does feel that way to me.

I’m told that once I am on an effec­tive dose of med­ica­tion, I’ll feel like a brand new per­son. I’ve heard that a lot for the last six months. I’d be happy if I could just feel like the old per­son I used to be, before I was diag­nosed and on this stu­pid medication.

The exhaus­tion caught up to me this week and pre­vented me from get­ting to work. I’ve been liv­ing on adren­a­lin and my sup­ply must have finally depleted, I sort of col­lapsed the other night. I’m now signed off work for a week to rest.

I feel like this is my life now and I’ll never feel like my old self again. I know I’m an impa­tient patient, but I just can’t see a path back to good health. Let’s hope my doctor’s vision is clearer than my own.

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