Dear Thyroid^TM

Dear Thyroid™

Healing Our Thyroids One Letter at a Time, As Many As it Takes!

About Dear Thyroid

Dear Thyroid is a literary thyroid support community for women, teens and men. Essentially, Dear Thyroid is written by patients, for patients.

Patients with thyroid diseases and thyroid cancers write and submit letters to their thyroids beginning with “Dear Thyroid”, among other literary things. With the exclusion of religion and politics, and the inclusion of uncensored language and health care issues, we come together in the name of thyroid disease.

Dear Thyroid gives us the opportunity to speak directly to our thyroids, not about our thyroids, on our terms, in our own words, to tell them specifically how they have and continue to impact our lives.

By sharing our letters, we discover commonalities; learn about each other’s diseases and cancers and find camaraderie, as we do by discussing each other’s experiences of our diseases and how those experiences shape and reshape our lives. Beginning with an extraordinary community of bold, uncensored voices expressing stupendous courage, outrageous humor, uncompromising irreverence, tenacious honesty and kindred love, the heart and soul of Dear Thyroid, the very essence of it, is the community.

Because thyroid diseases and cancers radically affect our families, we welcome and celebrate Dear Thyroid Family letters, letters from families who want to write to their loved ones thyroid and write about how it’s affected their lives.

Dear Thyroid’s Positioning Statement

• Create a community of thyroid patients that feel safe and comfortable writing about their diseases
• Support each other free of judgment
• Create awareness for thyroid diseases and thyroid cancers
• Re-brand the face of thyroid diseases and thyroid cancers
• Local Community Outreach for support
• Resources for thyroid patients
• Become a non-profit to provide thyroid patients with financial resources for prescriptions and other medical expenses
• Hold doctors accountable when improper treatment and negligence takes place

Dear Thyroid’s Mission Statement

Rebrand thyroid diseases and thyroid cancers, for ourselves as patients and the public’s perception of how these diseases affect patients and families. Misconceptions about thyroid diseases and thyroid cancers are rampant. We come together to give this disease a voice and a face, in our own words. By doing so, we hope to find healing, raise awareness and eventually a cure.

50 Million Americans (women, teens and men) have a thyroid condition, primarily hypothyroidism. 13 Million People have Graves Disease. 1.5 million Adults and 205,000 children have Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis. Over 37,000 new cases of thyroid cancer are diagnosed each year. 13 Million People have an undiagnosed thyroid disorder. 1 in 8 women during their lifetime will have some form of thyroid disease. Thyroid cancers and thyroid diseases are growing at an alarming rate amongst teens and young adults. This disease affects women, teens and men. Because thyroid disease and thyroid cancer is less prevalent in men, much like women and teens, they feel as isolated and alone and scared.

More often than not, doctors dismiss patients’ laments, chalking them up to a figment of their imagination, when really, these patients are so sick, they cannot live a healthy life because they can’t get a diagnosis and, or proper treatment. The issues patients face, are as extensive once diagnosed. Worse, insurance companies drop patients with private health insurance post-diagnosis (with certain autoimmune thyroid diseases). Should a patient be lucky enough to procure insurance, their medical bills and prescriptions are so exorbitant. Similarly, if the insurer’s provider even covers their prescriptions, yet another impossible fight.

Dear Thyroid is committed to being part of the solution. As a community, we invoke change, one letter, one image, one meet-up, one podcast at a time. We are a collective, unrelenting, unstoppable movement. Join us!

Dear Thyroid’s Literary, Visual, Outreach and Podcast Portfolio

• Dear Thyroid Letters
• Letters from Patients to their Thyroids
• Family Letters
• Thyrants
• Thyoligisms, Thygraphs, Thyetry, Thysongs and Thykus, to name a few
• Dear Thyroid Flickr Pool
• Dear Thyroid T-Shirts
• Tales from Thyietnam, our twice monthly podcast featuring renowned thyroid patient advocates, authors, writers and more
• How to Kick your Thyroid’s Ass, a scientifically based natural-nutrition column
• Going For The Throat, a health care column highlighting the issues with American Health Care, the need for health care reform and the impact on chronically ill patients and, or patients with chronic conditions.
• Going For The Throat, a health care column for thyroid patients about doctors, health care reform, insurance issues and more.
• Flying With Broken Wings, a thyroid research and awareness column dedicated to a myriad of topics that speak to thyroid patient issues: symptoms we don’t discuss, changes to our bodies and solutions to empower ourselves.
• Life Redefined, thyroid cancer in young adults column, which speaks to patients pre/during and post thyroid cancer, and the issues patients face.
• Dear Thyroid Community Outreach, Dear Thyroid Local Patient Meet ups and Tweet ups, Dear Thyroid Telephone Support Meet Ups
• Wearing My Disease On My Sleeve

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Dear Thyroid, DearThyroid.com, DearThyroid.org and all variations of Dear Thyroid (© All rights Reserved. WGA #1357149)

Dear Thyroid Anthology (© All rights Reserved. WGA #1357150)

Healing our Thyroids One Letter at a Time (© All rights Reserved)