DEAR THYROID^TM

Dear Thyroid,

Remember our 30th birthday…the big three-oh?  The one where we’d just moved 5,000 miles to a new city, had met only one person who invited us out with his friends, and that went horribly wrong and ended in the Emergency Room?  The one followed by the misery of a sweaty hot summer with the left arm in a full cast and being forced to re-learn how to do everything with only one hand?  Oh, it was horrible.  I was so frustrated, and angry.  I felt like a shambles, at time reduced to tears for the first time since I was a child because I could not do even some of the simplest of things that I’d always done for myself…or because I had no job, no health insurance, and unimaginable medical bills.  And then it all went wrong again, and had to be repeated… with surgery!  Oh, woe!  Eventually everything turned out okay, but for five long months I felt like I might as well as had my arm chopped off.  I was desperate, so desperate…

That experience changed me.  And it’s because of that experience that I understand.  It’s because of that experience that I understand how you feel now.

For ten long years I have blamed you for my misery.  I blamed you for making me fat, for making me not care, for making me tired, for making me grouchy.  I blamed you when I came “this close’ to losing my job because I can’t get up in the morning.  I blamed you for all the crap in life.  All of it.

All along you’ve been working, sort of…  making T3 just fine but unable to produce T4, and for no apparent reason.  You’re a thyroid with only one functioning arm, the other hobbled by factors beyond your control.  And you’ve cried in frustration, screamed and yelled for help, and despaired at your failure to do the job you just want to do.  Just like I did that summer.  Believe me, I know that despair!  But I never listened to you.  A decade has gone by and I didn’t hear what you were trying to tell me.  But this summer, I’ve heard your voice for the first time.  I actually listened.  Now I know what’s really going on, what’s really happening, and what’s really to blame.

But Thyroid, I don’t think I’ve ever said I’m sorry to you.  I’m sorry for blaming you when it wasn’t your fault.  I’m sorry for all the grief and anger and rage and hatred I’ve spewed at you for so long.  When those emotions subsided, I’m sorry I was so indifferent to you, and to your own suffering.  Your suffering is my suffering, but all I saw was my suffering.  I know (now) that you never meant to hurt me, things just went unexpectedly wrong…. like on that birthday.  I am sorry, Thyroid.

I don’t know what the future will bring, but I know that things, unexpected things, continue to go wrong.  So much has gone wrong already and I’m only about half-way through my life expectancy.  Although I sincerely hope it does not happen, I am becoming resigned to the fact that there is an increasing probability that The Doctors will decide you must be removed.  If that happens, I will grieve for your loss and the hole left behind.  I talk to you like you’re a separate entity, but you’re not… you’re me.  They say misery loves company.  We’re in this together, you and I. Till death or thyroidectomy do us part.

—Mike is 37 years old, excessively introspective today, and has had the nobody-knows-why type of hypothyroidism for the past 10 years.  He’s the only guy he knows with this disease.  (He also has six screws and a metal plate in his left arm.)  His Twitter account is titled “Mind Static” because, well, you know… brain fog. Twitter.

Tags: converting T4 into T3, Dear Thyroid Letters, thyroid blog, thyroid community for men, thyroid letters written by men, thyroid medical stories, thyroid patient horror stories, thyroid stress, thyroid support, thyroid support for men, thyroid symptoms, thyroid weight gain

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