DEAR THYROID^TM

Flying With Broken Wings: Long-distance Travel – Minimizing Your Stress and Maximizing Your Comfort was outstanding! We learned about traveling with chronic illness, from A to Z. Here’s an excerpt from Sarah’s column. “One last tip: for those of you non-Americans travelling to the USA, make sure you take a copy of your return ticket and dates with you. In my experience, they like you to have this because you will be asked a lot of questions by some of the customs officials, NYC – for obvious reasons – being one of the most rigorous customs stations. I’m quite an expert when it comes to going through Newark Airport.” Catch it if you missed it.

Lolly says: June 6, 2010 at 9:23 am

Hi Sarah,

Great to see you back hope your trip was enjoyable and you got to kiss the blarney stone.

Great tips BTW I could have done with more leg room on my long haul flight to the Caribbean I managed to move about the plane as much as i could my ankles had swollen by the time we had landed.

On the way back we had over 2 hours of turbulence so I wasn;t able to move about as freely. I wish I could sleep on journeys but I never do makes it seem so long and drawn out so I like to take my music with me blocks out the sound around or watch a film they put on, if i haven;t already seen it.

I will be coming to you for tips when I plan to visit the states next year all being well.

I will be travelling alone so first time for me.

Love
Lolly

Fat Thigh-roid Woes: How Did I Gland Here?! Nicole’s debut post was outstanding. If you missed it, please check it out. Here’s a snippet from Nicole’s post: “Anyways, I had no idea that anything was wrong with me, and all I saw was a 1-digit pant size and went “Suck it doc, I’ll go get my prescription somewhere else”.  After seeing an endo and realizing my heart was beating at 120 beats a minute, I still wasn’t convinced.  I spent 10 minutes trying to convince HER that SHE was wrong, cause I felt great!  This was Los Angeles, and everyone kept telling me to “keep up the good work” and “you look fantastic, what’s your secret?”  My secret?  Eat 5,000 calories a day, be close to a bathroom, and be okay with watching all the muscle on your body deplete into skin and cellulite.”

Thyroid Slave says: June 6, 2010 at 1:34 pm

Oh gosh – thank you SO much Nicole!

I too am (was?) one of the ‘fatty’ HypERs/Grave’s.

I got so fed up of trying to explain that a very small percentage of hypER sufferers *gain* weight, rather than lose it…and people giving me *those* looks…you know, the one’s where they’re really saying “yes love keep on telling yourself that if it makes you feel better about your size”…because to Joe Public…HypERs are meant to be stick-thin and glamorous…and here was I living on air & lettuce, being sternly lectured by a dietician once a month, cycling 15-20 miles a week, jogging 2-4 miles 3 nights a week, walking 6 dogs 7 days a week and popping Xenical/Orlistat pills like it was going out of fashion…and still looking like a total whale…with a Morbidly Obese BMI…

When I was trying to desperately drop weight for my thyroidectomy…it took a long time for even my (normally saintly) Endo to concede that I was indeed one of those ‘4-per-cent-ers’ as he calls us, the ones that *don’t/can’t* lose weight when hyper…and that, if the surgeon insisted I get down to his target operation weight we could all be battling for years to get anywhere even close…by which time my goiter would have succeeded in its evil mission and closed my windpipe completely…thanks to my Endo finally putting 2&2 together, my surgeon was finally persuaded that we really couldn’t keep putting it off and delaying any longer ha ha!

I guess I’m now a ‘fatty’ hypo, as I have no thyroid at all anymore…but maybe Eltroxin will sort out my weight-woes once & for all? But heck, at least now when I tell complete strangers about my thyroid woes, they’ll no longer look at me like I’m making it up…after all, us hypOs are meant to be fat aren’t we…ho hum

Nicole – Thank you thank you thank you xxx

It’s National Cancer Survivors Day! Joanna wrote a beautiful post in celebration of “National Cancer Survivor Day”. I hope you’ll connect with her in comments. Share your story with her. Joanna would love to hear from you.

Here’s a snippet from her post: “Cancer has greatly impacted my life. In October 2008, I learned that cancer was living inside my body. On that day in October, cancer was no longer something that happens to other people because cancer happened to me. Cancer has physically, mentally, and emotionally changed and challenged me. It’s not an easy road to walk…”

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