Here's a photo of my cancerous thyroid and lymph nodes after they were removed. Neat, huh?

My current stats:

Thyrogen-stimulated Tg 4.0, TgAB less than 20
(down from hypo-stimulated Tg 16.7 in Dec. 2009)
WBS negative

Thursday, June 4, 2009

Hypo Hell? Not This Time

I woke up in a really good mood today. I can’t believe the amount of energy I’ve had, despite going off my Synthroid almost three weeks ago. It’ll be three weeks on Sunday. Today is Day 19, and my TSH should be somewhere between 28 and 38. How do I know this? Well, I don’t, but I can make a fairly educated guess because I just made a graph of my TSH levels showing both of the times I’ve gone hypo before this. The graphs look almost identical. For example, on Day 25 the first time, my TSH was 59.78. On Day 25 the second time, my TSH was 60.27. [Note added later: My TSH was 40 that day. My graph was pretty close.]

Anyway, the subject was supposed to be my good mood and how fantastic I have felt during this hypo. I’ve been so lucky. My only side effects this time have been feeling a little hyper during the day, a little gassy, sometimes it feels like a big effort to hold my arms over my head for a few minutes (like when I wash my hair in the shower or comb it afterwards), I dream more and have weirder dreams, and I fall asleep on the couch at night earlier than I used to. Once in a while, I feel like I’m going to faint if I get up too quickly from sitting on the floor, but that happens to me whether I’m off Synthroid or not. Overall, it has been a piece of CAKE (low-iodine, of course).

I got my blood drawn this morning to check my TSH, and I should know the number tomorrow. (I’ll add it to the graph!) At the lab where I always have my blood drawn, the ladies who work there kind of know me by now since I’ve been going every 6 weeks or so for the last year. They are always really nice. The lady who drew my blood this morning said I was brave after she stuck the needle in my arm, which cracked me up. I’m a 42-year-old woman, for goodness sake! I should hope that by now I wouldn’t be a nervous wreck to have my blood drawn. Walking out of the lab, I felt so happy and upbeat, and I had all kinds of energy today all day. I didn’t even have the usual afternoon sleepiness I get in regular life, and I think it’s because I’ve been keeping myself really busy.

I’m continuing to nest. I’ve got the house almost “ready.” I still need to finish vacuuming and dusting the living room and family room, but other than that, it’s pretty much good to go. I’ve got Jack a shirt for his baptism on Sunday, and I have stocked both refrigerators with lots of good food for Pommy and Jack (and Brendan this weekend, when he’s here), and it’s been making me feel very good to get things all stocked up. I feel like I’m preparing for a storm or something—getting all the supplies we’ll need before the thunder starts. Speaking of thunder, it thundered and lightninged (not words, I’m sure) like crazy the other morning at 2 am. It woke me up from a weird dream I was having about a kindergarten teacher at Jack’s school.

But I feel like I’m getting things ready for armageddon or a birth or a transformation. I might be trying to distract myself from thoughts of how much I’m going to miss hugging my family every day for the first few days and how hard it’s going to be not to snuggle with Taco and Brady. Taco sits on my lap every night when I settle down to watch TV, and I’m not going to be able to do that for several days. I don’t know if it’s going to be harder on her or me. (We’re both big babies.)

I feel God’s presence in my life today. I feel peaceful, happy, content. I feel encouraged about the future.

1 comment:

  1. Because of my thyroid problems I often had frequent chills and experienced breathing problems. So I tried to seek my doctor’s help and he recommended natural thyroid supplements . After three days using it, all those problems seemed to disappear.

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