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.

While I have nothing against cats I am most assuredly a dog person.  The reason is because of the joy that they bring to life.  There is nothing so great as coming home to a dog who is overjoyed that you are back.  To see them so happy and playful makes even the most miserable days so much better.  There is nothing like having a puppy fall asleep in your lap as he sighs with contentment.  To me a dog brings more joy to life than any other animal can.  A dog is reminder to love often, unconditionally, and always to forgive.  I can't imagine my life without my puppy bailey.

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My Scariest nightmare is something that is easy to remember.  You don't forget the ones that wake you up sweating and screaming.

I was walking around the mall but no one else was around.  It was eerie as it appeared that all the stores were open and there was light everywhere.  I turned a corner and there was a line of guys walking towards me in a menacing manner.  I turned around and tried to get away.  I was able to run unlike in other nightmares where everything moves in slow motion.  However as I was running away everything went black. It stayed black for some time and when I was able to see something again I was back in the mall but I did not feel like myself.  I felt more like a third party external viewer, removed from the whole thing, and yet I was drawn to the trash can.  Inexplicably I could not look at or go anywhere but to the trash can.  As I got next to it the lid flipped open and inside was my body, chopped limb from limb.  On top of the bloody, gory, carnage that used to be me was my head and the face that shown was a terrified horrific image.   Half of my face was cartilage and bone with the mouth twisted in a disgusting fashion that I would later see again in " The Ring ". 

To me there is nothing more terrifying then to see yourself dead.  In this case not just dead but mutilated and there was nothing you could do about it.

I just blogged about my scariest nightmare to enter The Uninvited Scariest Nightmare Contest for 1,000 credits. You can earn free credits too! Brought to you by The Uninvited - In Theaters January 30th.

There have been many compliments given to me through out my life time and all of them are remembered.  Here is one that sticks out in my mind every time.

I was in college taking 18 credits hours that semester so I could graduate in 4 years and I was working 25-30 hours a week at Family Video as well so I could have money for food.  Needless to say I was going out of my mind with all the work and stress I was under.  This was a regular Friday night at Family Video aka we were packed and had lines that never seemed to end with people wanting to rent videos.  I was checking some videos out for this mother and her autistic son.  He whispers to his mom and she politely tells me that her son thinks I look like Elvis which is a HUGE compliment coming from him.  I can understand what he meant because I was unable to keep my sideburns in check so they had gotten long and flared out like Elvis.  Well it stopped me in my tracks and I smiled as I had not received a compliment in I don't even know how long.  I thanked them both profusely for it as it completely made my week.  I had been dealing with so many upset, impatient, and sometimes rude customers on top of my school work, tests, midterms, finals etc. and they stopped to give me a compliment like that.  I will never forget it for as long as I live.

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One of the biggest lessons I learned in College was to never take a low level class taught by a PhD Professor.  Let me explain why.

I took a class my first semester and final semester of college in the one and two thousand levels.  Both classes had the same results.  The topic was interesting but the teachers took them too seriously.  What I mean is this.  They thought nothing of assigning two to three papers a week.  That's right a week.  It's almost like they fail to understand that you have other classes that also assign homework.  They also are extremely picky about what you write about, how you write it, and what format it is in.  Trust me if you think you are a good writer then ask a PhD go over your paper and then see for yourself.  They live to tear paper to shreds.  I have a theory about this and I have labeled it PhD Rage.

It goes like this.  You have an individual who worked their butts off writing more than any person should getting ripped to pieces by their professor.  This can go on for many many years.  Once they are done with this and earn their degree they are under the impression that this is now normal.  then they go on to teach low level courses at a college where they do not hold tenure.  Imagine how that must feel to work so hard for a prestigious degree only to teach at a freshmen or sophomore level.  It makes them insane so they now have their students write papers like they were required to do when writing for the Thesis.  Now they get to tear someone's paper apart instead of the other way around.  Suddenly you take what could have been a very interesting course such as Sexuality and Spirtuality or Who am I: A course to find out what you want to do with the rest of your life and suck any and all enjoyment out of it.  So for anybody in College or about to enter College heed this advice.  No matter the class, no matter the subject, if it is not required for your degree then stay away from PhD taught courses.  You can thank me later.

As I get older ( I am only 25 so not to old ) I realize that being an adult does not always mean you feel like an adult.  Take for instance myself.  I have graduated college, work for a major financial firm, am married, make car payments, and own a dog.  Yet I don't feel like an adult.  It got me thinking...Where did this concept of what it feels like to be an adult come from?  Was it from watching my parents and figuring that the way they acted meant they must feel a certain way?  Is it nothing more than a concept and most people never feel like an adult?  I mean I have reached all the major milestones of adulthood.  I have a stabile adult career ( notice not a job but a career ) and yet I still feel like a kid.  Perhaps though it has more to do with the fact that I associate adulthood with boredom.  I still like to have a good time, drink occasionally, and do kid like things.  I still enjoy punk rock music, watch the simpsons, and enjoy a good video game as much as the next guy.  I just wonder if there will be a day when I say " yup I feel like an adult."  Honestly, I hope not.

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So this weekend my wife and I were hanging out with our best friend at Dicks when we began looking at their gun selection.  The reason is because my friend has two guns already and has been  trying to convince me to buy one.  Also my wife wants a gun for home defense.  The reason she wants one is because her dad is friends with many cops and he has told her all the horror stories that his cop friends passed down to him.  She is naturally very fearful of an intruder breaking in to our place.  She is only five foot two inches as well so her small build makes her more fearful and thus it is something I have been willing to discuss with her.  We have gone over the pros and cons of it as well as try and figure out what would work best.  We had some ideas and figured this excursion to Dicks would be a good opportunity to learn more.  We spoke with the sales associate there who fought in the military, and has shot intruders for home defense as well.  He gave us a lot of good advice such as that if you point a gun at someone you better be ready to pull that trigger.  It is not for intimidation.  If you just want to intimidate the intruder then get a big dog and a baseball bat.  He has a good point about this.  If you point a gun at an intruder he is more likely take his weapon out on you rather than run.  The sales associate also explained that a shotgun is better to have than a handgun.  The reason being is that if someone wakes you up in the middle of the night, it's dark, your groggy and possibly shaking through a jolt of fear and adrenaline, you are going to have trouble aiming and pointing a gun.  A shotgun is more likely to hit the intruder because of the spray of pellets that come out of it.  Our friend was very convinced and did want a weapon for home protection so he bought the Stoeger P350 home defense shotgun.  I was intrigued to learn more and wanted to feel what it was like to fire the assortment of weapons my friend had so he said he would take me to the shooting range the next day.  Well this morning we went out and we shot the shotgun, his 9mm handgun, and his .22 caliber rifle.  I was impressed.  The shotgun even from a distance of 50 feet had quite the spray pattern.  I was able to fire "accurately" at the paper we had up and did see the spray of pellets that hit the paper.  I put accurately in quotations because with a shotgun you are just shooting at a general direction while pellets fly everywhere.  It was quite convincing.  I then tried the 9mm handgun from a short distance of 7 feet ( or yards I cannot remember anymore ) and found it was much harder to be accurate with it.  The kick back on it would throw me off my target.  I was able to hit the paper but not always close to the center bullseye mark.  We fired about 60 rounds out of that and then moved on to the rifle.  Now with the scope on I was able to fire that very accuratley from most distances.  We started at 25 and moved it as far out as 100.  The problem with that though is two fold.  One is that I was using a scope and the original purpose of this trip was to find a suitable weapon that my wife and I can use for home defense.  The other problem was that the rifle was a small caliber gun so it would not do enough damage to a home intruder to stop him.  I was impressed with the shotgun the most in the end though and we will be taking my wife with us next weekend to see how she handles the kickback of the shotgun on her shoulder.  I had no problem with it but am a much stronger and larger person than she is. 

I found it all very enlightening and while the thought of owning a gun is very much on my mind now I am still not sure about the use of one for home defense.  Anyone else have any thoughts or ideas about this?