January 10, 2009

• Thyroid Disease

  About a year and a half ago I was diagnosed with Graves Disease.  What that means is that my thyroid was pumping out hormones so fast that it was uncontrollable.  Prior to being told this I never knew what a thyroid did or what it's purpose was.  Once it was explained to me by my doctor though I began to understand the numerous strange things I could not explain.

  You see what drove me to see the doctor was a few different things that just began to click on my mind.  I began to pay attention more to what I ate, and weighing in at only 180 ( I am 6 foot tall for reference ) but eating McDonald's two or three times a week did begin to seem unusual.  Then I noticed that if I was on my feet for a half hour or more I would get faint, sometimes even throwing up.  I also noticed that I was hot all the time.  I could walk outside in the dead of winter without a jacket.  Not for a long time but still.  So I went to the doctor.

  He did some test and when the blood results came back it looked like every hormone possible was out of whack in one way or the other.  It was simply unbelievable.  Now that we knew that we needed to begin treatment.  How do you treat a thyroid gone wild you ask?  Well this is how.

  I needed to see a specialist.  They no longer cut out your thyroid but instead treat it with radiation.  It begins like this.  They hold this machine to your neck for 10 minutes or so.  You have to sit as still as possible for it to be effective.  Once it is complete they give you a very low dose of radiation to see how much of it is absorbed by your thyroid. This takes 24 hours though so you go home and come back the next day.  The next day they hold that machine to your neck again and now they can tell how much of the radiation was absorbed into your thyroid which helps them determine how much or how little you need.  Mine absorbed a shocking 76.7% of the radiation which the doctor had never seen in all of his years of doing this.  Off the charts to say the least.  Then they take you for an Xray of sorts and see the size of your thyroid.  Mine turned out to be two to three times the normal size.  It was because of all this that I needed only a low dose of radiation.  How do you take radiation though?  Well in this case it was through a straw.  Yeah that's right you drink radioactive liquid.  For the next three days after that you cannot be around people, babies, or small animals.  I could have actually hurt babies or small animals if they got near me.  That is freaky to think about!  I also had to eat all my meals off of paper or plastic products because the radiation comes out through your saliva glands.  I had to sleep on the couch while my wife slept in the bed so that I would not harm her.  You think it ends there right?  Nope!

  Now that they have treated your thyroid you still need to get those hormones that your body normally produces.  See if they did their job right you should not have a thyroid gland anymore and so begins the hormone replacement pills.  It's nothing but guess work folks.  They put you on a dosage, you take it for a month, and then go back to the doctor for more blood work.  They then decide if it is correct or not based on your hormone levels.  This can take a while.  The worst part is that once they think they have it, well your levels can still get thrown off over time.  The biggest frustration is that because of this I have put on 50 pounds and nothing I do makes a lasting impact.  Until they get my TSH hormone correct ( still a work in progress to this day ) I am going to struggle with some weight gain.  Now it appears to have plateued at least but I would like to lose it. 

  So there it is folks.  I am writing this becuase nobody really understands what a thyroid disease can do to you.  I know I sure didn't until having gone through this mess.  However now you do too.  Just info I wanted to share.

  • 3:06 pm
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