Learning to accept myself

A watermelon is 91% water and 6% sugar.    There's your random fact for the day, which was spurred by my 6 year old's question yesterday.   "Why is a watermelon called a watermelon?"


In this family, we are known for being random.    Questions such as the above on are asked every day, all day long.   I've often thought of keeping a tally of how many questions we are asked on a daily basis but I usually make it to around 30 in the first 5 minutes I'm awake and decide to try again another day.   Cycle repeats.    Toys bought for holidays are played with a few days then tossed into a pile of Rubbermaid tubs in the corner of the room.   Tablets have new apps downloaded every five minutes because the oldest child has more of an interest in working a computer than playing anything on it.   Middle child plays pretend ALL. DAY.     I mean it, all day.   We've had an imaginary pet, Wilbert, for over a year now and he has had 20 babies, some of which are named Mushroom, Muffin, Blaster, Tiki, and CeeCee.   Just today I've been the sidekick to "waitress", "news reporter", "beauty salon", "mailman", driving in a pillow car, been on a picnic in the hallway, and I'm sure I'm leaving a few out that I wasn't only partially conscious of because my brain started to shut her voice out while I dreamed of a hot bath and bedtime.   My youngest is 20 months and on a hitting streak, drew on my hardwood floor with a black marker and crumbled up pop tart throughout the entire house.  Let's be honest.   8 years ago I would have been horrified by the way a house like mine functions.   Now, here I am in this moment and in this moment I realize that I need to embrace who we are and not who I imagined we would be. 

Something has been happening to me over the past few months and I cant quite put my finger on the cause of it.   I'm almost 30 so is this maturity that comes with age?   Am I finally finding my place in the world and less concerned about the thoughts of others?   Am I so tired from being the mom of three amazingly smart, energetic, intense children that I don't have the energy to worry about what people think of me?   I'm guessing it's a little bit of all of those things wrapped up in a package that I feel like showed up as easy as a package on my doorstep does.    One morning I opened the door, felt the fresh air on my face and a peace come over me while an inner voice spoke to me.   "You are just fine the way you are.  Stop hiding your uniqueness just to blend into the crowd so people won't look at you.   The only person suffering from that is yourself.   How can you teach your children to accept and appreciate the differences in people if you can't accept your own?"    I suppose that's what they mean when they talk about finding yourself and I have to say it's been a long time coming and it feels pretty amazing.    The qualities and traits I absolutely love about my children are some of my very own yet I feel embarrassed about them coming from myself.  One of my biggest goals of parenting is to teach my kiddos how to love who they are from a very early age and here I am almost 30 and can't even do it myself.  

So, this year for my "teach myself something new for my birthday" idea, I'm going to work on loving myself.    I have a lot of work to do but this is a start.    So what if I am random and can't stay on a topic longer than five minutes?   Does it really matter that I like to paint every room in my house at least once a year, sometimes more than 5 times?   Who cares that I get so bored I can't really repeat a craft I've done more than a few times because it's not a challenge after that?   These are the things that make me, ME and I need to celebrate them rather than hide them because after this many years of friendships there is one thing that is for certain---you cannot change who you are.    You can hide it to fit in, but you sure can't change it.    You are blessed with the children you have and they probably won't be anything like the picture you used to see when you closed your eyes and dreamed of your family sitting around a table, eating dinner together, napkins on laps and everybody using the correct fork for their salad.   Life rarely goes as planned----thank goodness.  :)

"Just" thyroid disease

Lately I have been feeling very determined.   I'm not sure if it's more from closing up the baby-making phase of my life or the fact that this year will bring age 30 upfront in my life.    It might be that I am sick and tired of being sick and tired.    Maybe it's all of the above.    It doesn't matter much which factors are driving me the most, but the fact that I have FINALLY arrived at this platform and hopefully publicly announcing my plan will keep me accountable for it. 

My thyroid disease was discovered in October of 2008, but looking back I believe it started when I was about 8 and I had 2-3 flares of it before it was discovered.   After I had Mason, I was EXHAUSTED.    He slept 12 hours a night from the time he was 5 weeks old, yet I was exhausted, had insomnia, sudden anxiety/adrenaline rushes, hair loss, extreme pain through my body, and a host of other random problems that scared me.    The first doctor I saw told me I was tired because I had just had a baby.   He was 3 months at the time and I told him I REALLY didn't believe that was the problem.   So, off to doctor #2 I went.   This doctor gave me anxiety meds and told me it was probably hormonal fluctuations so I felt okay with that and left with the meds.   They helped slightly, but then I noticed I was breaking out in hives after hot showers, and my clothing hurt to wear.  Every inch of my ribcage felt like a bruise and sleeping even hurt.   I scheduled an appt with another doctor and met my favorite doctor so far in my life.   He put in blood work to be done and I had 18 vials of blood taken.   Results showed I had low thyroid, sky high thyroid antibodies, vitamin d deficiency and vitamin b12 deficiency.    Diagnosis:  Hashimoto's Thyroiditis.  

I started generic synthroid at this point and scheduled follow ups to see how it was working.  I would see him once a month for blood work and each time I'd complain of new symptoms so he'd test me for more possibilities.    Rheumatoid arthiritis, lupus, celiac disease, lyme disease, antiphospholipid disease (blood clotting issues), diabetes, irritable bowel syndrome and I'm sure more I can't remember or pronounce.   My thyroid labwork was within normal limits (minus my antibodies because they never go away), and I still felt horrible.   At this point, I was referred out to an endocrinologist to better manage my thyroid disease.    I went in with a list a mile long of symptoms I was experiencing and was ready to meet this problem head on.    What I got was,  "take 4,000 Iu of vitamin daily, here are b12 shots you need to give yourself weekly, you could have Multiple Sclerosis but we will wait until you show more symptoms of it before we do a MRI.   You are a beautiful young woman, have many babies".   Um, what?!

Having babies is what revved up this disease at this point in my life, so while I wholeheartedly love my children this just didn't seem like great advice.   Plus, who tells a person suffering from anxiety and feeling lost in their own body that they might have MS?   Yes, please let me leave and NOT have panic attacks while I wonder if there are lesions on my brain causing my symptoms and no answers can be given.    Oy. 

I let my general doctor manage my thyroid labs from there on out and decided to seek out alternative treatments.  Well,  we decided to have another baby because like the endocrinologist said----I was young right?  Haha.   After Lydia was born, I felt great until she weaned.   The problems all came back after this point.   Desperate for relief, I had read about new research on selenium supplements and their effects on thyroid antibodies so I added that to my daily regimen and found a good chiropractor to fix my back.   I'd been bucked off a horse 5 years before and had been living with a severely misaligned back for years so I thought this could be a lot of the issue.    Adjustments and accupuncture were my main treatments at his office.   In the time I saw him, he suggested I had chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, multiple chemical sensitivity syndrome, myofasical pain syndrome, arthiritis in my back, spondilytes "fixating" two vertebrae together and that living under powerlines was causing all of my issues.    After adjustments I'd break out in hives and shake for about 30 minutes.    He did wonders for my back alignment but I started having exertional headaches and visions problems so I went to see an optometrist.  

The optometrist said that I may have inflamed optic nerves.   I asked what that really meant and she said "a pressure change in your brain is causing it" but that finding that cause would be a needle in a haystack.   I went home in panic attack mode and with a referral to an opthamologist for an ASAP appointment the next day.    Once again, eyes dilated and he said my optic nerves were fine--that that was just my normal, and that he didn't know why I was having so many floaters in my left eye.   It looked like a hair in my eye but there wasn't one.    He told me if anything changes to go to the ER, so the next day when I got out of the shower and my right pupil was so dilated that it looked blown, off to the ER I went.   There, they did a CT scan (because I was not leaving without it lol) and said I was sensitive to the medication used to dilate eyes and for some reason my right eye was re-dilating with heat.    No signs of stroke or brain bleed "but it could be possible that you have blood flow restriction to the back of your head" and it was recommended that I have a vascular study done.   *sigh....*

My thyroid calmed down and I began to feel better about July of 2011.   I was having more side effects from the thyroid medication itself than my actual thyroid so I stopped my thyroid meds.  (big mistake).   One month later, I was "diagnosed" with endometriosis after a surprise pregnancy and another miscarriage, third one total.   That led to me being put on birth control to suppress my cycle and hopefully the endo pain as well.   During the miscarriage, my IBS was so bad I couldn't leave the house for three weeks and a colonscopy was ordered because my body was in total freak out mode.   The colonscopy ruled out anything more serious than IBS and two months later we were on our way back to Kansas.    Birth control made me mentally crazy, and pregnancy helps endometriosis (HA. lie.) so we decided to have our third baby.  

Pregnancy. From. Hell.   I repeatedly asked to have my thyroid treated but because my labs "were within normal limits", nobody would treat me.   In the last 4 weeks of my pregnancy, my blood pressure was 150/105, heart palpitations were so bad I had to lay in bed to handle them, and the brain fog was UNREAL.  I still don't really remember how I ended up to the day before my due date at an induction but I knew she needed out.     A week after I had her I had major bleeding issues,  my blood pressure has been a mess since (it's been over a year now), and I've had skin issues, hair loss, depression/anxiety, joint pain and swelling, right upper quadrant pain,  nerve pain, muscle weakness/stiffness/twitching,  fatigue, migraines, ringing in my ears, pressure changes in my head, etc.    I went to a new endocrinologist and he told me that until I was consistently hyperthyroid/hypothyroid there was "nothing he could do for me" and we could treat my symptoms but not my thyroid.    Oh, okay....I'm sorry that I was under the impression I was paying to see a doctor and not an idiot who read the wrong website on google.    Clearly, I haven't been back to him.

Well, here we are up to date!   I've had NO luck with doctors understanding that Hashimoto's is an autoimmune disorder.   It comes with the same type of "side effects" as all other autoimmune disorders.   It cannot be treated exclusively by giving extra thyroid hormone.  That makes NO SENSE.   You wouldn't treat a patient with rheumatoid arthritis with only ibuprofen, would you?  You have to treat the source of the problem and not the symptoms or we will all end up feeling 80 when we are 40 and nothing will be left of our thyroid or the rest of our organs.   This past week I finally found some information that I feel could save so many people from suffering.   I don't have sites to give since I found them all mobile, but basically the problem in autoimmune disorders is an imbalance of the T-receptors in the body.    T-helper cells are what keep our immune system fighting invaders and there are two sides that need to be balanced--- Th-1 and Th2.     90% of Hashimoto's patients are Th-1 dominant so taking supplements and working towards stimulating the Th-2 side can help to balance the immune system and suppress the autoimmune attack.   This is true for several disorders, including chrons's, ulcerative colitis, lupus, rheumatoid arhritis, sjorgen's syndrome, etc.   There is blood work you can have done to break down the immune system and see which side is dominating your system specifically.   Once this is done, you can research what supplements and/or foods will boost your weaker side to help get you back to where you need to be.  

It's also been proven that upwards of 60% of Hashimoto's patients have a sensitivity to gluten.   The gluten molecule is so close to the shape of the thyroid molecule that it's even been suggested that the body starts to see thyroid molecules as an invader in the same way it does gluten, so that alone can trigger Hashimoto's and make it worse.   It is very necessary to cut gluten out of your diet to stop the extra stress on your gut/body and help stop the attack on your thyroid.    There are thyroid cells in every organ in the body.    If the attack continues, it's only a matter of time before the rest of your body starts to fail as well.    Slowly, and you may even contribute it to getting older and not being as active but it will happen.  

It won't be easy to cut gluten out and I am terrible at swallowing pills, but I am so tired of not having control over my body!   I know I cant cure my Hashimoto's, and there is a genetic predisposition to it so I was born to have it essentially, but I cannot sit back and let it do this to me anymore.   I want to be able to run a 5k.   I want to be able to participate in my kids sports activities.   I want to be able to play rec volleyball.    At this point, I'd really be grateful if I could carry laundry up and down the stairs without my knees hurting.     I'm ready to feel better, and I'm willing to do what it takes.     Please share these ideas with anyone you know suffering from thyroid disease, because I wish someone would have told me them years ago.   


"Take care of your body.  It's the only place you have to live"--Jim Rohn


*chriskessler.com gives a short description on the basics of balancing the immune system for Hashimoto's.