Dear Thyroid^TM

Hello Dear Thyroidians!

Welcome to Dear Thyroid’s new home. Please pardon our dust while we update the new site. Check out all of the new features and menu items.

We know there are issues with the site, such as font size. We are working on it. We are also still updating a few of our pages, namely resources. All of this will be taken care of over the weekend. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Please send us any complaints or concerns you have, dearthyroid@gmail.com or katie@dearthyroid.com ASAP; each is appreciated and each will be responded to.

Thanks for your patience.

Love,

Dear Thyroid

Liz will be posting Thyrants later on today, so I thought I would take this opportunity to say a few things, that is if you don’t mind indulging me for a moment.

I have been living inside my head lately, more so than usual. I suppose the difference of late, is that I don’t feel trapped inside my head. I believe I’m there because it’s where I need to be. Thinking, thinking, thinking, about so many things.

A few weeks ago, I wrote a Marco Thylo post that included our weird ass searches, of course. I also wrote about how well we can walk through the fire and, among other things, how important it is that we band together as a collective to invoke change.

Kairol Rosenthal, author of the book “Everything Changes”, wrote a post called “Using Sex to Sell Breast Cancer“. I encourage you to read it and join the discussion. Her post made me think about what I wrote, while affirming two things I believe to be true. The first; honest, irreverent portrayals of our disease can and should be sexy, to remind us that we, women and men, are sexy. We haven’t lost our mojo (love that word, it’s so camp and wrong). We have been re-branded without consent, but the grit and soul of our identity remains intact. Changing public perception to see us as beautiful, smart and sexy in spite of…, has merit and value, it’s something that needs to happen. The second; though it sickens me to write this, celebrity attachment to disease and cause, invokes change and parleys into research money. How do we feel about that? If we hate it, in my opinion, we can view this as an opportunity to take matters into our own hands to create the change we seek and need.

As you see, I have good reason to be inside my head. Care to join me inside my head? You’re welcome to spend a day there. Har.

The Thyperimenirific Thygraph Contest; so far, we have received many funny, irreverent and enlightened submissions. The deadline for submissions is Thursday. I beg you to please submit. The winners will be chosen by Mary Shomon and will receive a free copy of her latest book, The Menopause Thyroid Solution.

Which brings me to another point I wanted to make. Dear Thyroidians, your thyliteraryliciousness makes my day. Reading your comments, letters, emails, tweets and facebook posts, is such a gift. Thank you. Do you realize that you invoke change every time you write? Speaking for myself, I feel less alone, more brave, and laugh and cry a lot when I read your words. Don’t stop writing, keep speaking up and out about how your disease makes you feel, on your terms and in your words. You are gems, each and every one of you. How did I get to be so damn lucky to meet so many amazing women, men and teens, huh?!

I digress…

It’s a fuckin’ digressfest on Dear Thyroid today, ain’t it?! Liz Schau is running a FABULOUS two-month liver detox challenge. Have you visited the site? Have you joined? You must. I’m joining. I want my liver to feel liverlicious. The liver plays such a vital role in our thyroids. Thanks to Liz, I know that now. Before, who knew?! Like a schmuck, I thought if I was a lushy lusharella, I’d have liver issues. Oh, was I wrong.

Finally, loverdeedos, have you submitted photos for Dear Thyroid’s October Flickr Pool? The theme is BEAUTIFUL. Check out some of the submissions so far, they took my wig off and I don’t wear a wig.

Again, Thyrants will be posted this afternoon. Thanks for indulging me.

Love,

Katie

I, Liz, would like to think if anything good can come from the thyroid hell that I sometimes (or, okay, alot of the time) am forced to live in and with, it would be this: someone else — ANYone else — understanding just how important good health is.  Sure, we toast each other good health at holidays and major life events and sometimes say things like, “your health is all you really need in life.”  But until that good health is irrevocably stolen, we cannot grasp just how true and poignant it really is, or why we wish each other those things to begin with.  For me, this good health isn’t only important so that we don’t die, but it’s important so that the years we do live are not restricted or filled with too much pain.

I’m about to hit the two-year anniversary of my diagnosis, next month.  As with most significant dates in life, I can remember the whole scene and all its minutiae: me, so nervous and sitting in the chair in the corner of the small and clean room in the university’s health center, pretending to read the magazines and sip every now and then at the extra large/super gigantic coffee I was drinking once or twice a day everyday, all so that I’d actually/potentially/possibly stay awake; the doctor finally walking in with the official word and a hopeful message that in three months time and with one little pill, everything would be completely better; and me, smiling and shaking his hand so hard because I thought — at the time — this was the end to my problems.  July 2007 isn’t the date all these Hashimoto’s symptoms first started happening, but it is a significant marker because it was the day I thought I finally got the answer (I later realized the answer isn’t an on-paper medical definition to describe what my body is doing to itself; the answer, instead, is the way I make an effort to cope and not be overcome everyday).  And in these past two years, I know for a fact that the people around me have been able to gain something good from my disease.  If there is a “good part” of disease, I can be satisfied knowing it’s this: my friends and family now, officially, love their thyroids.  Not only that, but they know what the hell a thyroid even is.  They know where it’s located (at the base of the neck), they know its shape (a butterfly), they know its so-necessary-for-life function (regulate almost all the body’s hormones), and they know lives are impaired when it stops working.

Dear Thyroid expanded our submission guidelines to include letters of gratitude from such people with healthy thyroids all because our disease can and does affect those we know in a good way: it makes them grateful.  Also, it’s important to highlight people without disease who now appreciate the service their gland does for their entire body because there’s some amazing awareness being created here, don’t you think?  With thyroid disease on the rise and with millions of people walking around as of yet undiagnosed, we need a good dose of awareness; it makes for a better quality of life.  And hey, I’d say it’s a pretty positive message too: be thankful.  These gratitude letters remind us as we read them that there is so much to be grateful for, if only we’d just realize it.  One need not be at the mercy of a temperamental thyroid to understand life really ain’t so bad, and our bodies — always tirelessly at work — are so deserving of our thanks.

Glandarific Beauties,

We’re experiencing some technical difficulties with submissions@dearthyroid.com. So, if you haven’t heard back from us within 24 hours of submission, please re-submit to dearthyroid@gmail.com. We apologize for the inconvenience and appreicate every one of your sumptuous words. Re-send, honeybunnies.

Keep those rantarific rants and gorgeous letters coming, we cherish them so.