There’s a family history of autoimmune disorders…at least on one side. The other tends to drink themselves into sudden heart-related events, lucky bastards. My grandfather’s got myasthenia gravis, my mother has MS, and my misguided white cells attack my thyroid.
I’m just so goth, cutting isn’t attention-getting enough; I have to slowly destroy a gland that regulates all bodily functions. Look upon me, lip-pierced neck-tattoo guy, and weep at your own insufficiency.
Hashimoto’s thyroiditis is not life-threatening, even without medication…at least not right away. When you’re 800 pounds at 32 and die of pustulated bedsores…hey, nobody lives forever, and we have to accept that our metabolisms slow as we age, right? It’s instead deeply annoying because the syndrome manifests as visible moral failings. Put on more and more weight? You’re gluttonous. Barely drag yourself out of bed? You’re lazy. Trouble remembering where you parked the car, what the last chapter covered, your own age? You’re purposely stupid.
And that’s just from doctors who, if you manage to impress upon them the seriousness of your issues, might order a single blood test, which actually tests the pituitary gland’s function…and, inevitably, will tell you you’re ‘within normal range.’ More likely, the white coat will admonish you for lying about how much you eat, sleep, and exercise and insist you live better to feel better.
Which is why I buy my thyroid hormone replacement pills from Canada. I’m done wasting time with medical doctors who barely know where a thyroid is (left clavicle, right?) and wasting money on nutritionists who’ve done less research than me and keep pushing for expensive Chronic Fatigue Syndrome tests, with its even more expensive ‘treatments.’ I’ll never again be dependent on them for, quite literally, my lifeforce. Instead, I take my little pills on the schedule that seems to work best, swallow a handful of vitamins every morning, hit the gym as often as the body can manage, and make my baby steps toward health.
The latest MS research continues to support the theory that genetic predisposition is only part of what leaves someone with a dead stupid immune system – some sort of tipping point is required, like a viral infection. So, I could point toward that bad summer of 1997, when I came down with some virus the family GPs lackadaisically diagnosed as ‘not mono,’ after which I was allergic to everything. Air was deadly, or at least the pollen, dust, mold, dander, or wayward latex powder wafting on it left me choking and vulnerable to every bug in the dorm.
And, apparently, my thyroid was suddenly on the most wanted list as well. There’s a pattern of pre-diagnosis weight shifts with hashi’s…during the period your immune system is in its
aaaaaaagh a thyroid, attack!!! mode, the dying cells dump their load of stimulating hormone into the bloodstream, and you lose weight. As a bonus, you have trouble sleeping, feel anxious, and can slip into panic attacks. Then there’s spells where your immune system is mellower, and your poor damaged thyroid returns to functioning, albeit not as well…and lucky you, all the weight you lost and more piles on, while your hair thins and your limbs are made of lead. But, chins up, soon enough it’s all
thyroid, grrrrr! again and you lose the weight! Aaaand then put it back on. Then lose it again! And put it back on.
Over time you lose less and gain more, until you’re anxiously grinding through the overactive periods still suffering the exhaustion and gain of the underactive ones, and THAT’s when you finally accept something is wrong and go see Your Friendly Family Doctor, who runs one test, then kicks you in the shin for being a fatty-fatty-two-by-four looking for a magic thin pill.
Anyway, that sums up 1997 – 2004, until I was finally diagnosed. Mystery virus, you did stick with me.
And I don’t know why it bugs me, having a start date for this thing. Maybe because the years prior to 1997 were so unlucky and sometimes tragic, and I’d been crawling out of that. Learning who I was when I wasn’t just focused on surviving, that I loved kickboxing and making prints out of toxic chemistry and hiking and sometimes even pretty lace dresses…and then I was back in survival mode, too tired for kickboxing and hiking and too weak in the lungs for darkroom smells and too fat to wear my pretty clothes, too uncomfortable in my skin to buy new ones that also wouldn’t fit a few months.
There’s another school of thought, that allergies and more serious autoimmune conditions are partly caused by neurotic anxiety, dem ole bad vibrations. In which case…ha ha!...I was also screwed. In one sense, I can see this, the nearly constant adrenaline grind interrupting metabolic and immune function eventually leading to a sort of snapback, as a woman who gives birth can have temporary autoimmune problems when her immune system overcompensates for nine months of suppression. But how has this been measured, or even noted anecdotally? An overactive thyroid causes anxiety and an underactive thyroid causes depression, and both color memories in an anxious/depressive light. It’d be easy to take the effect for the cause, given a firm grounding in pseudoscience.
Still…I can feel the difference when I’m stressed. It takes longer to recover from exercise, and a cold bug can knock me back for weeks. I’ve been trying to cut back on pointless anxiety, with some success (and pointlessly worrying about that, since the desire to write and take pictures is a pointless anxiety that work alleviates). At least it’s something I can put a little hope in, instead of only cursing whatever classmate or fellow coffee drinker passed on my little virus friend.
