Some Rights Reserved
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons
Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0
United States License.
Teenagers With Thyroid Diseases, We Want You!
Teenagers and young adults are struggling with thyroid diseases and thyroid cancers — quite frankly, it’s devastating.
I became symptomatic in my late twenties, so I can’t imagine what my life would’ve been like had I experienced symptoms and been diagnosed at such a young age. My heart breaks for everyone who suffers with thyroid disease, of course. For teenagers and young adults, I feel the same empathy and heartache. However, I haven’t walked their mile; therefore, I can’t and wouldn’t speak on their behalf, as I believe it would be disrespectful.
At Dear Thyroid, we endeavor to make sure everyone has a voice and support from their peers. For that reason, we are seeking a teenager willing to write an ongoing letter series to their thyroid, one letter a month, sharing their experience of their disease.
Presently, to my knowledge, we have a few teenagers contending with thyroid disease and we’re hoping that one of you will consider writing this series. Please email Katie for further details. We’d love to hear from you.
Love,
Dear Thyroid
Tags: Dear Thyroid Community, Dear Thyroid Letters, epistolary series, letters to thyroid glands, letters to thyroidectomized selves, letters to thyroids, support for teenagers with thyroid disease, Teenagers with thyroid diseases, teenagers writing to their thyrioids, thyroid blog, Thyroid patient letters, thyroid support
Follow Dear Thyroid on Twitter/@DearThyroid | See our Facebook Page | Become a Fan on Facebook | Join our Facebook Group
You Can Create a Dear Thyroid Profile and share with friends!
Reader Feedback
16 Responses to “Teenagers With Thyroid Diseases, We Want You!”
Leave a Reply
Comments are moderated in an effort to control spam. If you have a previously approved Comment, this one should go right through. Thanks for your patience!
I’m working on my daughters, hoping at least one of the three will write a letter. All of them were diagnosed before age 20 (sigh). No cancer, just low thyroid, but I’m betting it will get worse as they get older. That’s what happened to me.
Marilyn, I’m sorry to hear it but hopefully with all the great resources we now have (Dear Thyroid, Mary Shomon, et al), it will be much more manageable.
I was diagnosed with hypohyroidism at age 11, I’m now 57. Because I was fat and we had a lousy family doctor IMO. when my pedi died, this creep took a reading when I was 16, declared my thyroid “normal,” and took me off medication, saying I was “just using this as an excuse to stay fat.” Off the mediction, my T4 stayed low normal & TSH, high normal. My husband was career military, and back then, most military doctors despised anyone who wasn’t at the lowest nd of the weight range for their height. They echoed the “fat & lazy” bit, despite my inability to lose much weight even on highly calorie restricted diets & strnuous exercise (I was obviously lying; all fat people are liars, you see). It took a Scottish research endocrinologist to diagnose me & start me back on medication. Years later, I had as a patient a young man in his early 20s, who’d had severe cardiomyopathy from undiagnosed, untreated Hashimoto’s disease – the same thing I had, that was untreated 20 years! His doctor was able to reverse most of his heart disease, but not all. He told me it was a miracle that I’d survived without severe heart disease, that I’d lived at all! I do have many other chronic illnesses; I wonder now if any/all of those are related to this denial of treatment for so long.
My son was diagnosed with type I diabetes 7 years ago, & Hashimoto’s 3 – 4 yr. later. My husband also has it. It runs in his family & mine. My son says the diabetes has made much more impact than Hashimoto’s, which is “not something I have to take a shot for.” But it tells me there is a lot more interconnection in the endocrine system than even doctors know about.
Hey
I can’t get the e-mail link to work. I was diagnosed with hypothyroidism when I was in 8th grade. I am now going to be a sophomore at the University of Oklahoma. It has affected me in several ways, one mainly being weight problems obviously, but its so much more than that. One common symptom forgotten is fatigue. I remember hating P.E. until I receive that magical pill I take once a day. When I began that I could run with everyone else, I could play the games and not be wiped out. It was such a relief to be normal, well as normal as I can be. Recently I was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia which has flared some problems but Fibro tends to put my thyroid disease on the back burner.
I don’t know if you have many people writing in so I thought I would offer. I don’t know how much help I would be. Feel free to contact me at MelodicCallie@yahoo.com
I would be willing to do this 🙂 I’ve talked to you before Katie, I’m a bit of a newbie to this site but yes, I am almost 17 and the doctor’s at a loss for what the hell is going on with me and my stupid thyroid – my GP has been leaning more towards thyroid cancer which is frightening
🙁
So … yes.
x
Thank you everyone! I will be emailing you this week to discuss.
I’M SO PROUD OF YOU for speaking up and out about your disease. I’m so damn sorry that you suffer with this. I wish I could take it away…
We’re here for each other.