DEAR THYROID^TM

Dear Thyroid,

……the daydream……

Dude, didn’t you just love it the other week when you secreted your stellar concoction of T4 and T3 so I could maintain all that energy necessitated by the rigorous sexual intercourse I indulged in with that coquettish minx of a waitress. I had her on the freaking bar; I was grabbing onto the pumps (not a pun) for extra leverage! OUTRAGEOUS.

Wahey! What about last month in that triathlon. Got to be honest, I thought I was toast after the swimming leg but I knew I could rely upon you and your hussy the adrenal glands to imbue my muscles with the hormones of a champion. Phew! I came close to thanking you when I made that final surge for the line. BIG DADDY.

Oh yeah! Pulling that job in the boardroom the other day; you were my backbone for all my stomach churning charisma. That little cocktail of metabolic equilibrium you blew out, it had me pitching my project like the big dog I am! Incisive thinking, oozing positivity – man, I’m going to make sure that hot, short-skirt wearing demon of a manager kisses my neck in gratitude after she endorses my proposal and erects (hehe) my career prospects. BOOM TIME.

Ahhh…Laurel & Hardy, Starsky & Hutch, Holmes & Watson; what a team we are hey partner. Your hormones and my inexorably talented personality – the

sky’s the limit.

Except that…..well, looking back, eh, I guess, well…you never came through for me.

……the reality……

The frenzied passion promise of youth rarely materialised as I succumbed to the unquenchable anxiety of hyperthyroidism. My body was humming with the impish current of wildly excessive T3 drawing the physical tremor, constant perspiration and eye bulging effects that no women’s touch could incite. Summon a girl!? Fuck, I could barely summon an erection in that endocrine blaze. But hey, that’s not what life is about right? True, the aim of the game is a partner, trust, an understanding. Yet even when you were dethroned by two doses of radioactive iodine you left me with a bleak internal depression…always there. It was far too shaming a secret to allow the intimacy of a relationship. Well, what can I say old pal…that was my reasoning.

Triathlons? Shit. A three legged event? I was hamstrung. Sure I’m built to prosper on the sports field, but hormonally I was betrayed by your complete disdain for regulation. At 16, when I should have been diving at the feet of strikers or screaming for commitment from my defence, I was fainting and listening to the thump, thump, thump of my overwrought heart. 150 pulse at resting translates to meltdown upon exertion. I’m sure you are a good guy but you could have done your job. They called me the weak one, the slow one, the slouch…it’s a good job I’ve got some broad shoulders to compensate for the disloyal gland that you became.

Ah the career, the bright lights. I’m a fanciful guy often daydreaming of constructing my own social initiative, leading my own school for the economically underprivileged, that sort of arena. When you left, all that remained was a bundle of overwrought nerves, doubt and hormone deficiency. It wasn’t as simple as popping a hormone pill to replace you so eight years after I burnt you out, I was freefalling from high flying grad schemes to paltry part-time posts, finally coming to rest in the graveyard of unemployment. Ha, shagging my female boss!? Delusion – I was too busy trying to explain the suffocating invisible illness to her which demanded my many feeble absences. My many feeble failings.

Look, I’m not bitter. But we could have it all. Hot tubs and strippers, you know the drill. Oh fuck, who I’m kidding – What is my capability and what is my ceiling? What is fact and what is fiction? What is the illness and what is me? We are not the team we could have been.
……the future……

Looking forward, being progressive, rebuilding, finding optimal, balance – this is the lexicon of the thyroid patient that is returning from rock bottom. I’m sure what I am seeking is no different to a vast majority of sufferers. Contentment: the ability not to seek more or less but to be satisfied with one’s lot. In the nirvana of contentment, there is no need for that extra supplement that MIGHT take the edge off the enveloping fatigue. Furthermore, there is no resentment over a stolen past of gaudy glitz and seedy soirees that grows more incredulous by the reverie. Contentment is a place where there is no compulsion to hide the shame of your troubled past brought about by a condition that affords little more than a derisive scoff in some medical and social quarters. Here, the incessant self-analysis steadily gauging your symptoms day in day out is a redundant mechanism.

It is the nirvana for which I strive for. Divorced from you thyroid, pleased to regale our embattled relationship to friends and family with an internal pride. You will have given me something; no longer greedily taking.
……………………………………………………………
Must dash, my vitals imply I have another pill to take. Here’s hoping there is no cause for a further letter.

Yours Sincerely,

Michael
BIO: My name is Mike. In 2006, at age 17, I was diagnosed with Graves Disease which was eventually treated with two doses of Radioactive Iodine in ’08 and ’09. This left me grievously underactive as planned, so I was treated with the standard Levothyroxine. Despite completing University this medication left me unable to regain my health. 8 and 1/2 years later I am still experimenting with alternative treatments……

Tags: men with Graves disease, teen letters to their thyroids, teens with Graves disease

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