Dear Thyroid^TM

Dear Thyroid,

Why is it that you regularly insult me with your blurs and your blanks? Why is it that you seem to think it fun to leave me in an endless staring state while I am trying to do something useful? Why is it…

Moan, moan, moan.
I hear you criticize my blaming of you, and my hypocritical “I don’t blame” saying.
All she ever does is moan.
Perhaps, I reply, to myself, disliking myself for it at once. But you’re slacking, Thyroid, don’t you see? You’re slacking. The rest of my body is trying unbelievably hard to get a move on with things while you, meanwhile, are sitting on your butt. No one ever gets by without a hell of a lot of hard work and you, Thyroid, are a couch potato – no, I mean it, an actual couch potato – sit on you and I’ll sink, like sitting on fresh mash…no – I wonder if this image is merely from whenever it was that you were born into laziness?…I wonder what mash is like when it is rotten. Is it soft and slimy, or hard and rough?

Disgusting.

What am I doing thinking about sinking into a rotten potato? I think we both thought that.
It is an interesting metaphor though, don’t you think, Thyroid? Take a seat (except you already are sitting) and I’ll explain:

What can you see out of mashed potato? Nothing? How alert are you? What does it feel like?
A bit Blur? I agree.

I wonder who invented the term “couch potato.” I reckon he was referring to you.

Oh, but we outer casings are so kind, aren’t we? Referring to you and your cousins in such a vile way. Ought I to feel kind – for you are more vile than such terms – or guilty for my evil ways?

Now, Thyroid, let’s be frank here. Let’s make a deal, you and me. I will stop referring to you in such vile terminologies (I am assuming that you take offence to being named a couch potato?) and you, meanwhile, will immediately end your snoring which fogs my brain (seriously, your breath stinks) and will get up and start walking.

Deal?

I thought so.

(Bio): I am aged 18 and was diagnosed with hypothyroidism last year. I recently set up my blog – Small But Mighty: A Thyroid Life because I was angered by the poppycock awareness that we have of thyroid disease. Posts are about thyroid articles in the media, along with information.

Dear Thyroid,

I am 19, an age that’s supposed to be one of the most memorable of my life. I should be starting university, going out with my friends, having my first relationships, starting an independent life on my own, and generally enjoying life… except I can’t. Because of you, ever since I was 15, I’ve had to watch my youth pass me by. Because of you, I almost never have any energy to go out, not even to the cinema. Because of you, I have bouts of depression, so frequent that even my wonderful, supportive and caring friends are, despite themselves, getting sick of all my cancellations, rants and crying attacks. I know they’re fed up, though they try hard not to show it. They struggle to understand me, they want to include me and they feel bad for leaving me behind. You’re messing with their lives too.

My family, on the other hand, gave up on me a long time ago. Sometimes they ignore me, sometimes they yell, but mostly they laugh at my “hypochondriac ways”. But they never listen, and they certainly never try to understand. But because of you I’m dependent on them, because my energy levels are so fucking low some days I can barely cook some pasta for myself without feeling like I’m about to collapse. So much for independence.

This is why I missed my graduation ceremony, my school’s graduation trip to Portugal, and my favourite cousin’s wedding. This is also why I’m not starting university, and I don’t know if I ever will, despite all my ambitions and dreams. This is why, instead of planning a promising future and believing I could achieve something with my life, I’m now wondering if I’ll ever manage to hold any sort of job and be able to support myself.

You, and your stupid Hashimoto’s disease, are also the reason why I’m always afraid of shitting myself in public. I can’t even begin to count the times I’ve had to leave a party to go home to wash and change or how many times I’ve had to make chit-chat with people, all the while worrying whether they can smell that something is wrong. You have no idea how humiliating it is just to type this, let alone having to live through it every day. How mortifying it is having this as your reality. How painful it is when shame and fear become an everyday thing for you.

Because of you, I have to listen to my friends talk about their relationships and hate myself for envying them. I’ve had to come to terms with the fact that I might never have a relationship of my own. Not even a fling. And no, it’s not even because I’m too tired for one, or too busy thinking about grown-up diapers. It’s because I haven’t had a hint of sex drive in 4 years. I’ve never even been able to enjoy a kiss, let alone anything more serious. Because of you, that is exactly what I had to explain while I was rejecting the person I’d been desperately in love with for ages, when he miraculously told me he was in love with me too. Because of you, any sort of romance is basically off-limits to me, and I just have to suffer, standing at the sidelines.

You’ve made me hate my life. What’s left of it, anyway. At the tender age of 19, you’ve made me angry, bitter, disillusioned and desperate. You’ve made me contemplate suicide while my friend were contemplating university choices. I still take my Armour, and my iron, and my vitamins every day. I still try to keep some hope alive. But even if one day something changes for the better, I know that I’ll never be the person I was. I know that I’ll never get my youth back.

P.S.  I wish I could have made my letter to you somewhat more light, at least a bit more humourous. I do joke about my unusual ”lifestyle” with my friends sometimes, when I have the energy. But I have to admit, when I’m alone, I don’t find it all that funny. I think that I might have had a sense of humour a long time ago and that you robbed me of it, just like you robbed me of just about everything else in life. But then again, you know, I can’t really be sure, what with all the brain fog and everything.

Yours unfortunately,

Luci

(Bio) I’m a fresh-out-of-high-school would-be hedonist, trying to find some purpose and stability in my chaotic life. I want to be a doctor (yeah, I know), and hope that someday I’ll actually get a chance to try. Or at least a chance to move out of my parents’ place. I’ve been fighting with hypo and Hashimoto’s since I was 15, and though I’m not as courageous in doing so as some of you, I still haven’t given up.

Dear Thyroid,

Since you were caught red-handed in the act of doing absolutely nothing (completely against the rules of bodily functions) last year, your new food (namely Levothyroxine) has been attempting to revitalize your will-power and muscles. The response, in terms of your non-reactiveness, told to me by a highly qualified professional, Blood Test (I am told that you need no introductions as you know each other well) has, on numerous occasions been, and I quote: ‘HI’ (high). This, quite frankly, is unacceptable.

Luckily for you I am feeling generous. Yes, I will let you off. After all, it’s not your fault that you were attacked by our immune system gone ruthless. Although, to be perfectly honest with you, if you really had no skills in defense, you could’ve worked a little harder at introducing yourself to your oblivious outer-casing, me – don’t you think?

I mean, seriously, why couldn’t you of started off with more original symptoms, ones that would make you and your identical siblings (from other oblivious people) newsworthy enough to gain some headlines and a spot in the school syllabus: a spot on the nose maybe; perhaps a dark line drawn across the centre of my forehead, almost like Harry Potter’s scar? You might even give me a super-power, maybe some kind of flying ability; don’t you think that would be creative? It would please the media, certainly. Can you imagine the amount of times your scientific name would appear, mixed with the names of thousands of now-not-so-oblivious people? ‘Thyroid to Blame For Mysterious Flying-People’, it would say, added with the official: ‘…Says Top-Class Professor‘. The Daily Mail’s headline would probably read something like ‘Superman & Co Run Wild in Airspace’, and would be followed by the by-line: ‘Crazed crowd land for thyroid medication’.

Be serious! You say. I am science: be serious!

But I am. If you gave me this symptom – well, for starters it would be much more fun! You gave me a disease dry of imagination. How boring! – In truth though, I would’ve found out years earlier that you weren’t quite doing your job, or rather that you’d been attacked and left silently wailing, and, well, who knows where life might’ve taken me?

Now, I am terribly sorry you were attacked by our ruthless immune system (really though, we mustn’t blame it, it just thought you were – if I may say it nicely – ugly) but revenge, as I am sure you know, is not the way to go about your everyday life. So (and do please note the emphasis on that so) that means no – and by no I mean absolutely no – mucking around and being indecisive. It means no being greedy and asking “please Sir, can I have some more?” as I can only picture you doing. And, quite finally, it means that you will stop swimming through my blood and knocking on Mr. Pituitary’s door, disturbing all the other neighborhoods situated inside my brain.

I am glad that we have that quite clear.

Seeing as Blood Test now informs me that you are today apparently ‘normal’, perhaps you will swim back down that bubbly fountain and start informing my body and brain that despite their previous assumptions there is actually a supply of everything they need and it is sitting behind their door. Now if they would please open it we can, all of us get to business. That is, unless you really are planning to give me the flying symptom any time soon? I really wouldn’t mind if you did…

Thanking you in advance for you hard work,

Louise Sopher

(Bio): I am aged 18 and was diagnosed with hypothyroidism last year. I recently set up my blog – Small But Mighty: A Thyroid Life because I was angered by the poppycock awareness that we have of thyroid disease. Posts are about thyroid articles in the media, along with information. Get to know Louise, check out, Louise’s Blog and Which Charity.

Dear Thyroid,

What’s the latest with you besides being a lazy ass? You know it’s 2AM and because you’re winning, I’m still awake. Not because I’m cramming for a test, or I was out with friends or a boyfriend, for that matter, probably your fat ass looks just as big as my 38D boobs, protruding from my throat. But hey I’m a regular fairytale princess. I’m a regular sleeping beauty. I had to cut my hair, hair that used to go all the way to the middle of my back, like Rapunzel because of the heat.

I’m in a dragon-guarded castle and you are the dragon. I’m just waiting for my knight in shining armor — that’s all I can do is live in this waiting game, in the “waiting place”.  Sometimes I even feel like Fiona locked away in a tower for no one to see. And I have to tell you, it’s not all your fault, they won’t see me. This makes you happy? My birthday is in January, it’s not like I’m getting any younger or healthier, for that matter.

My body aches, my head aches, and my throat aches. I want you to let someone save me from your dragon thyriody self, could you let that happen, please? I want to dance at homecoming. I want my feet and hands to be warm, and not asleep. I want to experience this year and not be stuck at home watching the soap network, instead of at the game.

I feel locked in the highest tower and no one can help because no one knows how to slay the dragon. I can keep myself in check. I can eat right, but you keep fighting back, I guess you are just as stubborn as me.

‘Till Later,

Maddi

(Bio) I was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s at 15, and now 17 and starting my senior year of high school. Even though I struggle, like most, I am still trying to be a normal teen, I am and writer and editor of my school paper. I hope someday to become an elementary school principle. I also hope for love this year, like most teenage girls, even though my weight changes as much as the shoes I wear, my greatest wish is to go though and entire day without a nap.