Whole 30 (Day 2 and 3)

Okay, so obviously I'm no good at blogging.  I missed a day of blogging already, but I plan to...try my best documenting this Whole 30 process.

Day 2 was awesome.  I have no idea what I ate.  I know I stuck to the plan, but I could not tell you exactly what I had for breakfast, lunch, or dinner.  Forgive me, but I have no thyroid.  I absolutely have no memory sometimes, but since I am writing this at 9 p.m. my brain is still working with today's activities so I will share what I ate today, which is Day 3.

Breakfast:  2 eggs, with tomato and avocado

Lunch:  Chicken Strips (Whole 30 approved), cucumbers and tomatoes

So, that is basically what I ate for the day and that is absolutely SAD.  My program kind of got messed because I didn't prepare anything for lunch.  I took my kids to a stay at-home mom's group bowling function where they made pizzas and simply didn't pack a lunch for myself.  The chicken strips were a late lunch and when I eat late, I typically don't eat dinner.  I failed for today, but I am also sticking with it more than I did last time...well, that's not true.  The only difference is that I am not craving juice and sweets this time, which is giving me a clue that I may actually do this for a whole 30 days (hence Whole 30).

I believe my saving grace this time is my cousin, who is here visiting.  Oh, by the way, did I tell you that I moved across the United States of America with my husband and three children by car? That, I will write about later.  Anywho, here are some pictures of my food for Day 3 and of course my cousins beautiful breakfast.  She always puts me to shame.  Hopefully, I'll blog tomorrow.  Happy 4th of July.

My cousin's breakfast (Chard, 2 eggs, Avocado)

My Breakfast (2 boiled eggs, tomatoes, avocado)

My Lunch (Chicken Strips Whole 30 approved, cucumber, tomato, and avocado)

Breathe and Listen

Riedel Thyroiditis

I just wanted to do a short post about a very important condition.  A friend of mine was recently diagnosed with Riedel Thyroiditis and it has been extremely difficult for her to find others.  Riedel Thyroiditis is very rare. The basic problem of this condition involves a mass (dense fibrosis) that I assume attaches itself to the thyroid, grows and then invades other structures of the neck.  It is a very serious condition because it has the ability to crush the trachea, which is deadly.  I just wanted to put this post out in the universe with the hope that if someone may happen to search one day for this condition and find my page that they will know that they are not alone.  There is a support group on Facebook (link provided) and even if you don't have the condition, it would be nice to show these guys some support.  Surgery is not an option for the people who have this condition and most of the time either steroids or medication that destroys the chance of having further children is given to control the growth of the mass.  There are also times that medication simply doesn't work and people have to learn to live with the difficulty of eating and the worry of dying.

The thyroid community has been so good to me.  This condition is so rare that my friend has only found one other person like herself.  I know there are others out there who think they are going through this alone.  I know that I felt alone with all my thyroid problems and one of my saving graces has been the online thyroid community, so please give them a shout out of support if you can.

Breathe and Listen

Whole 30 (Day 1)

I cannot believe I am typing right now!  My children have decided to sleep in, which means that they are asleep past 6 a.m.  I'm all types of excited right now.

Okay, so I've decided to begin a Whole 30.  I did one last year and failed horribly.  I am, like most people, somewhat addicted to sweets. I say somewhat because it isn't something I absolutely need all of the time, but I have found that I do turn to something sweet at least once a day for a pick me up.  I don't know if it is common with people with thyroid issues, but I imagine that it would be.  I don't drink coffee and I don't eat refined sugar, but I can fill up on honey with the best of them.  Although some would argue that that would be okay in moderation, I would like to curb that craving of mine for a little bit of time.

Oh, so I have not explained the Whole 30 (can you tell I'm excited to be typing?).  Forgive me, the Whole 30 is basically Paleo without trying to make the foods you use to eat more paleo like. You know, like Paleo cookies, cupcakes, and brownies.  The Whole 30 is really about eating more of a whole foods diet along with eliminating some common irritant foods, like soy.  I can't explain in its totality, but I will say that it is hard for me to follow correctly because I want to cheat and sneak in some soy and gluten free chocolate chips just to get me past 4 p.m.  I can't do that on a Whole 30 diet, so needless to say I find myself getting irritated and really tired at around 6 p.m. Who knows what that is all about, but I have sneaky suspicion that it may have to do with not having enough T3 or a touch of adrenal fatigue.  I need to get a clear idea of what is going on with my body without constantly adding a stimulant and that is what I plan to do for the next 30 days.

Day 1 was successful, but the first day always is.  It's day 7 that I have a problem with, so we shall see. I wish I had taken pics of all my meals, but here is the low down of what I ate:

Breakfast:  2 boiled eggs, sliced tomato, and 1/4 of a cucumber seasoned with salt and pepper

Snack:  Sliced strawberries with bananas

Lunch:  Modified Tacos (Ground beef, tomato, and avocado)  served over cabbage.

Snack:  Smoothie (Kale, strawberry, and peach) it was quite tart, so it may not work for everyone

Dinner:  Chicken with cabbage

Also, I only drink green tea (unsweetened), water, and my smoothies during the day.

That's it for Day #1.  I plan to actually take pictures of what I eat, hopefully.

Also, here is a link to what the Whole 30 is actually about.

Update (11 months post TT)

Please forgive me for my absence.  I truly appreciate all those that sent me messages inquiring about my health and well-being.  It is funny how the anonymity of online correspondence can be quite comforting when dealing with an illness.  It is as if the closest people to you can't grasp the full gravity of what is happening to you because he or she sees you everyday and either can't or refuses to acknowledge your reality.  But, in an online environment, my words are my truths and I am accepted and cared for. I am forever grateful for the thoughts that were sent my way.

Now, for the update:

I had a horrible time during the initial months after surgery.  There were a number of things that I didn't expect to happen.  First,  I didn't expect the anger I felt about having an unnecessary surgery.  I realize that the doctors were doing what they thought was best, but there must be another way.  Second, all of the issues that come along with being Hypo hit me like a dump truck.  I started to gain weight, the depression sat on me constantly, my ability to have conversations and concentrate disappeared.  I thought I would begin to take steps forwards after surgery, but instead I found myself taking steps backwards.  I was once again, ill. I had to take the semester off from school, which really put me down in the dumps.  That was one of the things that I held onto that made me feel as though I was beating this thing.  I had to acknowledge that I was different and though being humbled builds incredible character, I just didn't want to be humbled yet again with limitations.  Another thing came about, which made me stop blogging.  I had become the thyroid girl.  I would bring it up in all my conversations.  I carried it with me wherever I went.  I was consumed with all things thyroid.  I was becoming an extremist.  Disclaimer:  I think we all should be extremist when it comes to our health, but in all things, there must be a balance.  I needed to take a break and find me again, so I did and the journey has been painful and refreshing. 

Enough of that, here is how I got better (not quite back to me, but close).  

1.  I got off of the Levothyroxine and switched to Synthroid.  I also added Cytomel. (Synthroid 100MCG, Cytomel 50MCG) - I really feel like I need to try an Armour or Naturethroid.  I'll keep you posted.

2.  I revamped my diet again.  I do still eat a paleo diet the majority of the time and will be starting a Whole 30 at the beginning of July.  I plan to blog about it. 

3.  I got to sleep.  There is no need for an explanation.  It is a process and it doesn't always happen, but I consciously make an effort to sleep at least 6 hours.  

5.  I have just added yoga and learning to listen to my body.  For years, I thought it was a bunch of nonsense, but I can't do what I use to do.  I live off of manufactured energy provided by the 2 pills I take every day.  I need to aid my body with meditation and breathing.  I need to be mindful in all that I surround myself around - I'm about to go on a tangent, but I am learning to listen and breathe, which is awesome for someone like myself.

That's it!  

Someone sent me a message asking me if I felt that the TT (total thyroidectomy) was the right choice and I couldn't answer the question in a straight manner, but now that I think about it I would have to say that it isn't and wasn't the best choice for me.  You see, I NEVER had bad labs, except for the Hashimoto's antibodies of course.  Yes, I had a nodule that was suspicious and they couldn't get a definite answer, but now, especially with the way the world is going, I often think about what happens when I can't get my medication.  I think about all that my body is missing.  Every cell in your body uses the thyroid hormone and I depend on synthetic medication to do something that it really can never do fully.  Of course, if one has cancer the answer is quite simple and that is to remove the thyroid, but in the numerous cases of individuals like myself we are constantly told that medication will make us whole again and that is simply not true.  

Bye for now.  Below is a picture of how my neck looks now. You can barely see the scar.

6 weeks post Thyroidectomy

I feel horrible.  

When I initially came home after my surgery, I was in pain but I was full of hope.  I had this feeling of being extremely tired, but as if a weight had been lifted off of my shoulders.  That feeling is gone. My old friend has returned...that weight, that feeling of walking through deep sand with a huge weight on my back has returned.  I'm hurt, but I am no longer upset about it.  I was mad when I noticed "the weight" returned.  I had this feeling of betrayal and being overwhelmed.  I have never gone into detail about exactly how I feel, but I'm compelled to do so this evening.  I don't know why I haven't done this before.  So here it goes....

I can't sleep most of the time and if I do it's not restful sleep, so I am Mommy, wife, and student in a zombie like state. I wake up in the morning, my heart pounds like its about to come out of my chest.  I don't get up quickly because I know from experience that I will faint, so I just wait.  My children come in and I slowly get up and I will myself to ignore the pounding.  By the time, I make it to the top of my stairs the pounding stops, but by the time I get to the bottom of the stairs, I feel thirsty, dizzy, and weak. Over time, the thirst and dizziness goes away, but there are so many other things that hurt that I don't know for sure if it does go away. I get cross eyed while picking up my children's vitamins and find myself steadying myself most mornings to get it all together. I forget things often, even eating. I have to write down what I am going to make for my children for breakfast, lunch and dinner because mid-way into cooking, I forget what I was doing.  When I drive my daughter to school, I talk on the phone to keep myself centered.  My eyes don't drift and I feel secure that if something does happen, someone will know. I can't concentrate, so I spend hours doing homework.  My body aches to the point that I have to call my husband home somedays because my hips lock up and I can't walk. I fine myself sometimes talking to people and can't remember what they have said even though I am looking directly at them. I have somehow developed this Costochondritis (look it up), which hurts like you have no idea. I have also developed an extreme sensitivity to gluten or maybe even soy.  If I eat out, I break out in hives, no matter what. Today, was my first day without a hive break out.  I went for 4 days with hives on my face. There are other things too, like the weight, which I can only attribute to depression.  I use to be so active. I use to be so full of life and now I feel as if I'm mourning the old me at times.

I went to see my regular doctor (Endo doesn't want to see me until the 13th) and she told me that I needed to find a way to accept that this is my life now.  I wanted to slap her, but after thinking about it for a little while, I think she is right. I have to learn to accept it because being sad and angry will not do anything for me.  My daughter helped me to learn that in an innocent conversation a while back.  I, in my motherly wisdom told her that sadness and anger can kill a person and then I thought about myself. I have to let it go.  

In all honesty, most people would be tired in my shoes.  I am a stay at-home mother with 2 very active children.  I have a husband that I like very much ;) and I take 4 classes at the local community college.  Most people in my shoes would be tired, so I have come to realize that a lot of my fatigue is relative to my lifestyle; however, the other symptoms don't fall in the tired mom category.  If you read this, would anyone be so kind as to suggest what I should say to the Endo.  I'm at a loss.  I know it takes time to get medication right after surgery, but I can't go on like this much longer.  I'm barely holding on.  The bright side is that I got a neck lift out of all this.  I'm posting pictures, so they should be below. 

BEFORE SURGERY

1 WEEK POST OP

6 WEEK POST OP

Thoughts?

One more thing, I find it ironic that my appointment with the Veteran's Affairs Endocrinologist is at the end of the month.  This appointment was made back in April I believe.  I have no thyroid.  I am happy to cancel my appointment for someone else, but I still think its a damn shame what they are doing to veterans.  

Week 1 & 2 - Recovery

I'm going to see the surgeon tomorrow.  I am hoping he will take this bandage off of my neck.  I am getting tired of people staring at it.  I told a lady at the library the other day that it was a tattoo.  She gave me a quick uncomfortable smile and ran away. I told another lady that I was covering up a hole where my cigarette goes in.  She too, scurried away.  I can't keep doing that...especially with my children around.  It is amusing.  My daughter just looks at me with a knowing smirk and I know I'm creating a child with a very dark sense of humor. I simply can't help myself sometimes.

It will be a full 2 weeks since I have had my surgery and I think I have had an epiphany.  I realize, since surgery, that exhaustion does not include the feeling of being weighed down.  I think the feeling of being weighed down is...depression. Along with this new information, I have come to accept that I have more than likely been depressed for a very long time. I come from a long line of women that laugh at the word "depressed".  I am or was one of those type of people.  How on Earth could I be depressed if I laugh, find joy, or even look forward to making other people happy?  I simply don't know the answer to that, but I do know that although I am exhausted most of the time now, I don't feel weighed down anymore.  I want to run again and go places and dance in the kitchen with my kids.  I don't think I was an Eeyore before surgery, probably more like Pooh Bear, but now I want to be Tigger.  If only I had a thyroid to help out with energy part and of course better hips to aid me with dancing and running, life would be perfect.

Along with the grey clouds being lifted, I have been given back my memory.  I don't remember much and that is something that I have been dealing with for years.  I have important memories that I hold dear, but the majority of my childhood is essentially gone. I am starting to remember things that have seemed fuzzy for years and most of those memories are not good.  It has unnerved me and I have begun to think that maybe on some crazy level my thyroid was protecting me or  it could be that stressed out little girls grow up to have stressed adrenals and everything else begins to breakdown.  I'm only speaking for myself, but I remember seeing a psychologist about 3 years ago.  I was feeling tired.  I was unable to get any restful sleep or any sleep at all.  I felt like I was at the beginning of a breakdown.  My regular doctor wanted to give me an antidepressant and because "I don't get depressed", I refused. He suggested I see a psychologist. I believed I was stressed not depressed for obvious reasons.  My husband had been deployed 3 months after we had our daughter and was basically missing the first year of her life.  We moved from our home in Texas to a much smaller one in NC.  I was in a new place with no friends or family.  It was stressful not depressing, or so I thought.

The psychologist was weird, but now that I think back on her, I should have listened.  After we spoke at length, she told me that she didn't believe that I was stressed because of any of the issues I told her about (I spoke about Iraq and my husband's deployment), she thought I had depleted the cortisol in my body because of the constant stress in my life as a whole.  She believed that I had PTSD, but didn't think it had anything to do with Iraq.  She, from one question, in which I was blindly honest, figured that I had PTSD from my childhood and my cortisol levels had been slowly depleting since a very early age.  I thought the lady was full of crap, but now that I have educated myself, I realize what she was describing was Adrenal Fatigue.  If only she would have said the name! I never went back to her after that first meeting and now (since surgery) I think of her often.  She read me correctly and that scared me.  I have always been able to hide the pain of my childhood quite well, but she saw it and I felt like I couldn't breathe after leaving her.  I had been found out. She could see that I was damaged and I didn't like that.  The question that gave me away was: What do you want in your life? My answer: A home without chaos.

So...here I am with a bandage around my neck thinking, and thinking.  The fog in my brain has lifted and because of that...I think way too much.  2 weeks after surgery and I have no new "thyroid" stuff going on.  My journey is taking me back to reflect on fixing the inner me.  I will say that even though I think or self reflect more often, there is no emotion attached, which is weird to me.  There is a dullness and I can't put my finger on what that is.

Oh wait, I'm lying...I did get blood work back and the Endo doesn't want to do anything to my medication just yet.  Speaking with some people on the Hashimoto's support page on FB, I have been reminded that I need to take it slow in regards to getting the optimal level of medication.  Here are my labs: TSH 0.762 (0.450-4.500), T4 1.68 (0.82-1.77), T3 2.6 (2.0-4.4), TPO 507 (0-34).  Let me know what you think.

Step 3: Surgery

The thyroid cloud has rolled in and has settled on my brain.  It feels like I'm swimming in cloudy, gray water desperately trying to find my way to the top to get some fresh air and escape.  I find it amusing...right now.  I guess this is what happens after having ones thyroid removed less than a week ago.

The surgery was a success.  I no longer have a thyroid, but thankfully, I still feel like me.

We (my husband and I) arrived at the hospital at 5:30 a.m.  I was in surgery by 7 a.m. and out by 10:30 a.m. The drugs they gave me before taking me up to the operating room were AWESOME!  I don't remember much from the time the lady put them in, though I know I was conscious during that time.  Heaven only knows what I said.  My last memory was of my husband walking away from me and telling the nurse that he didn't like to say goodbye because it seemed like we weren't going to see each other again.  I remembered thinking that he should have told me that because I thought he was just being an insensitive ass. A few seconds later, he returned and kissed me on the forehead and said he loved me and again walked away.  That's all I remember.  The next conscious thought I have is of waking up in recovery.

Recovery, to me, was a glimpse into hell.  There are people moaning and you can't see them, but you can hear them.  You really don't know what's going on because you're high, so it's kind of real but not. The lady next to me kept screaming, "it's burning, make it stop, MAKE IT STOP".  I was beginning to think I had really messed up, but then I fell back asleep and awoke more aware of my surroundings.  The lady was still screaming, but I was fully aware of where I was and what was going on. The doctor came and told me that they took the thyroid out and pathology should come back in 5 days.  I gave him a high five.  Yes, I gave him a high five.  I was high, what do you expect?

They took me to my room and that's when the pain and my bladder hit me. I was very, very sore and I had to pee like my life depended on it.  The soreness is intensified because it's in such an awkward place.  I tried to lift my head and boy, did it hurt.  The nurse told me to relax, but all I could think of was making it to the toilet. She (the nurse) reminded me of my grandmother, which alarmed me. I told her I need to go and it took about 2 minutes to unhook all of the devices so I could actually make it.  Thankfully, I made it, but my whole body wasn't in compliance to being upright and I barfed.  It hurt so bad and it continued to happen on and off for the rest of the day.

The rest of my stay in the hospital was uneventful.  The nurse, like my grandmother, just didn't seem comfortable leaving me alone to just sleep.  She would come in and remind me to get up and walk, use the breathing machine, and not get depressed.  Who does that? My calcium dipped to a very low level and almost delayed my release, but it came back up and it was expected considering the surgery happened so close to the parathyroid gland.  I came home the day after surgery and felt fine.  I had no brain fog.  I was just sore.  Today, is day 4 post surgery and I definitely feel like those early thyroid days.

We got the pathology report back and it's not Cancer.  The funny thing is that when I heard the doctor say it, I was angry.  I know it's stupid, but I never wanted to have this surgery. I felt like I had taken my thyroid out for no reason.  I felt stupid. I had a pity party for all of 20 minutes. My husband had to remind me that most people don't cry when they hear they don't have cancer.  That put things into perspective.

I went to the Endo yesterday after hearing the results and got my levels checked and he upped my dosage to 75 mcg of Synthroid.  I'm no longer on Levothyroxine.  He told me that it (Levothyroxine) was not good for me after a thyroidectomy and from this point on I should be on Synthroid.  That made me feel good because a friend told me that earlier. He also said that my dosage would slowly be increased because it was dangerous to shoot me up without monitoring my blood.  Funny thing is that my insurance won't pay for Synthroid, so we have to pay $30 a month for me to be sane.  I'm not complaining because I know others pay more for things they need, but I think it's completely nonsense.

That's it.  Now the journey to wellness continues.  Also, if any of you have seen my appetite, please tell it to come back.  I'm withering away over here and I hate forcing myself to eat.