Dear Thyroid^TM

My Dear Thyroid,

You are a pain in my neck!!

I absolutely resent the fact the quality of the rest of my life depends on that little pill, which really doesn’t help all that much. Why, why, why did you fail me?

Because of you, I look and feel like a bloated toad. Because of you, I move about as fast as a three-toed-sloth. Because of you, I suffer from CRS (can’t remember shit). Because of you, I’m surprised my husband hasn’t left me since I have absolutely NO libido and no energy if I did! Thanks a lot!

I took good care of you in my youth, and this is how you treat me?! Oh, I’ve had muscle aches and headaches before, but at least I did something to deserve them. Now, I don’t have to do anything and I still hurt!

Oh, and thanks a lot for the heart palpitations. I don’t know how many nights I’ve laid awake wondering if the old ticker was going to flutter and die. The only good thing to come out of that was a trip to a wonderful cardiologist who did a stress test, echocardiogram and carotid doplar.

At least I know my heart is working like it’s supposed to! I just wanted you to know how terribly disappointed and disgusted with you I am.

(Bio) I’m a 60 year old female diagnosed with Hashimoto’s thyroiditis about seven years ago. I was put on 75mcg of Synthroid which worked fine until my mail order pharmacy suggested I take levothyroxin instead as it would save ME money. Last winter was the worst of my life with exhaustion, dry skin, weight gain, and feeling cold constantly. My thyroid was increased to 100 mcg but I still have symptoms and continue to gain weight. Back to Synthroid!

Recently, it occurred to me just how many parallels there are in our “real” lives that intersect our diseases.

For example, we’ve been having issues with our .org email addresses. I can receive .org email, but I can’t respond via .org. This makes me feel constipated, like my intestines are stockpiling shit and my puckered rectum is begging for an explosion. Hello Hypo!

The other night when I was on my way to meet my brother, I was stuck in traffic—hate traffic. Encircled by cars, most so frustrated, they revved their engines and forced their way past other cars. As if they had to go first, these drivers needed to be right. Hello endocrinologist!

I have a vintage car. I should get rid of it, but I can’t. I love it too much. Lately, it’s been overheating unless I crank the fuckin’ heater. Overheating throws the entire engine off and can ruin your car, requiring an engine overhaul. Hello Hyper!

In what ways do your lives intersect with your disease? Discuss!

This week’s searches:

1. Condoms graves eye disease—unless you’re planning to fuck my lady balls, which you do not have permission to do, I highly doubt you’ll need a condom. Don’t worry, it’s not contagious. Dumb ass.
2. “What am I new?”—This is one of my favorite sayings. I say it all the time. So glad Dear Thyroid came up for this.
3. “You have been targeted for termination”—Do you have a WII game in mind for us to terminate our thyroids?
4. Another way to be deliciously—Thylicious? Thyempowered? Or eaten?
5. Can u bye home thyroid kits—This is a good un’. The typo is tits bye because it’s so ironic in this context. Who wouldn’t love to find goodbye, please home thyroid kits?!
6. Endocriminologist—Aren’t they all? Just kidding, not all of them. Unfortunately, most of them. We love good endocrinologist yarns.
7. Eating dairy creates glue—In your intestines? I’ll leave that one for Liz. However, I will say this, dairy bungs me up big time unless I’ve been a good vegan soldier and have a little dairy, than my ass is a three ring circus.
8. feeling like shit on thyroxine—Hey, good news, you’ll feel like shit on Synthroid, Armour and Nature-throid, too. Happy?
9. Glutitch—Sounds like a Dear Thyroid Glossary word, right?
10. Goiter when to go to the emergency room—When you can’t fucking breathe or when you feel like it’s choking you. Scratch that. Go now, right now.
11. How can your thyroid mess your body up—How can’t it is the question.
12. How to cure roid rage—Ha! Good one.
13. How to fuck your thyroid—That’s the beauty of thyroid diseases and thyroid cancers, we get to fuck ourselves. Think of it is thysturbation.
14. I am too fat for this shit—Who you tellin?! Most of us are. All of us who are HATE IT and feel the same way. Welcome home, honey buns.

Dear Thyroid Offline Support Updates

Do not forget, tomorrow night, two of our fabulous dames will be meeting up in Pembroke, MA @ 6:30 PM.

Chicago, what’s up, yo? We have five fabulous dames ready to roll. Do we have a date scheduled? Any other Chicago Dear Thyroidians care to join?

Raleigh, what’s up, yo? We have two kick ass broads ready to roll. Where are we at? Any other Thyrellas care to join?

To find out more about offline support and to get your city listed, please click here. If you want to meet up in any of the cities already listed, email Katie with your email address and location.

Finally, if you haven’t read Chronic Babe’s “Patients for a Moment” line up, please do. There are some unbelievable stories that are inspiring, heartbreaking and funny—all of them are so life affirming.

Love,

Me

Dear Thyroid;

All right, I’ve tried to ignore you like a festering itchy mosquito bite, but you won’t go away. I’ve tried playing the game that everyone keeps telling me, that if I pretend that you don’t exist, you won’t.

I’ve hidden in the bottom of the well, and Vitamin D3 has brought me some of the sunlight that has been missing in my life, but right now I am as flat as a club soda in a paper cup that has been left on the windowsill for a week. Not only am I flat, no fizz, feeling lifeless, I think I am evaporating. What will be left of me when you are done?

My fleshly being continually increases. I cannot bear to look in the mirror. Photographs will intimately know the shredder, and the two shall become one pile of me, in unrecognizable little strips. Don’t bother trying to put them together, I won’t be there.

Oh, I am losing weight all right, but it is not physically, it is spiritually. My spirit has failed to thrive and it is starving itself to death. My soul is hungry to taste autumn, to drink in my family, to try a new recipe for laughter, but when I attempt to eat at the table of life, I have no appetite.

I try to write emails to friends that I have not seen in forever, and you are there to wipe out my mind. I have nothing to say.

Why is it, oh thynemy that you are mean to me most of the time and that I have so much to say to you? But, you, you never answer, you just sit there, staring out the window. Don’t think that when I start to walk away, that I don’t hear your low pitched chuckles.

I’m going out into the real sunlight now, and I will smile and laugh, and force myself to have a soul feeding snack. I may not be ready for a hearty meal, seven courses of tasting the scrumptiousness that is found in every minute of the day, but just watch out, I am going shopping for the ingredients, starting today!

(Bio) Kathy Taylor, 54 In and out of the well, wearing too much black and brown, is waiting to break out the good stuff.

Dear Thyroid,

I am 19, an age that’s supposed to be one of the most memorable of my life. I should be starting university, going out with my friends, having my first relationships, starting an independent life on my own, and generally enjoying life… except I can’t. Because of you, ever since I was 15, I’ve had to watch my youth pass me by. Because of you, I almost never have any energy to go out, not even to the cinema. Because of you, I have bouts of depression, so frequent that even my wonderful, supportive and caring friends are, despite themselves, getting sick of all my cancellations, rants and crying attacks. I know they’re fed up, though they try hard not to show it. They struggle to understand me, they want to include me and they feel bad for leaving me behind. You’re messing with their lives too.

My family, on the other hand, gave up on me a long time ago. Sometimes they ignore me, sometimes they yell, but mostly they laugh at my “hypochondriac ways”. But they never listen, and they certainly never try to understand. But because of you I’m dependent on them, because my energy levels are so fucking low some days I can barely cook some pasta for myself without feeling like I’m about to collapse. So much for independence.

This is why I missed my graduation ceremony, my school’s graduation trip to Portugal, and my favourite cousin’s wedding. This is also why I’m not starting university, and I don’t know if I ever will, despite all my ambitions and dreams. This is why, instead of planning a promising future and believing I could achieve something with my life, I’m now wondering if I’ll ever manage to hold any sort of job and be able to support myself.

You, and your stupid Hashimoto’s disease, are also the reason why I’m always afraid of shitting myself in public. I can’t even begin to count the times I’ve had to leave a party to go home to wash and change or how many times I’ve had to make chit-chat with people, all the while worrying whether they can smell that something is wrong. You have no idea how humiliating it is just to type this, let alone having to live through it every day. How mortifying it is having this as your reality. How painful it is when shame and fear become an everyday thing for you.

Because of you, I have to listen to my friends talk about their relationships and hate myself for envying them. I’ve had to come to terms with the fact that I might never have a relationship of my own. Not even a fling. And no, it’s not even because I’m too tired for one, or too busy thinking about grown-up diapers. It’s because I haven’t had a hint of sex drive in 4 years. I’ve never even been able to enjoy a kiss, let alone anything more serious. Because of you, that is exactly what I had to explain while I was rejecting the person I’d been desperately in love with for ages, when he miraculously told me he was in love with me too. Because of you, any sort of romance is basically off-limits to me, and I just have to suffer, standing at the sidelines.

You’ve made me hate my life. What’s left of it, anyway. At the tender age of 19, you’ve made me angry, bitter, disillusioned and desperate. You’ve made me contemplate suicide while my friend were contemplating university choices. I still take my Armour, and my iron, and my vitamins every day. I still try to keep some hope alive. But even if one day something changes for the better, I know that I’ll never be the person I was. I know that I’ll never get my youth back.

P.S.  I wish I could have made my letter to you somewhat more light, at least a bit more humourous. I do joke about my unusual ”lifestyle” with my friends sometimes, when I have the energy. But I have to admit, when I’m alone, I don’t find it all that funny. I think that I might have had a sense of humour a long time ago and that you robbed me of it, just like you robbed me of just about everything else in life. But then again, you know, I can’t really be sure, what with all the brain fog and everything.

Yours unfortunately,

Luci

(Bio) I’m a fresh-out-of-high-school would-be hedonist, trying to find some purpose and stability in my chaotic life. I want to be a doctor (yeah, I know), and hope that someday I’ll actually get a chance to try. Or at least a chance to move out of my parents’ place. I’ve been fighting with hypo and Hashimoto’s since I was 15, and though I’m not as courageous in doing so as some of you, I still haven’t given up.