What A Difference A Day Makes

...24 little hours....

So much to say, so little time.

First off, missed weighing on Thursday morning because I was rushing to get to a doctors' appointment...but I was delighted to hop on the scales Friday morning, straight out of bed, and note a 2lbs loss...yay me! That's 5 lbs since January 1st, without really trying...so this week I will drink more water, start a sensible walking plan, pay more attention to what I'm eating, and make some real effort. Roll on Thurs 5th February...

The doctor's appointment?...well, to get my latest blood test results back. Some good news, some bad news....the bad offsets the good, and makes me a little sad to be honest. The good news is that my liver function tests, which were previously way out (leading me to worry I'd over done things in my student days) were back in normal ranges (yay!), proving my doctor right when she said at the time it was mostly due to my thyroid levels, but that we'd look into them more closely in the future if they didn't settle after I'd started on the thyroid meds.
The bad news...I had some hormone tests done this time around because I've been having really sucky monthly cycles for the last while...mainly a fortnightly cycle instead of monthly, with horrendous 'flooding' to the point where I literally dare not leave the house, for up to 7 days at a time, unless I have packed a whole 'going out' bag, complete with several changes of clothing and mammoth supplies of sanitary supplies (TMI I know, sorry), and had knowledge of access to a bathroom at all times, at a moment's notice. Well apparently my oestradiol levels (I'm sure I learnt this is 'oestrogen' at school?) are low, which apparently explains the awful time I'm having right now...but we don't know why, so again, for now, we're lumping that into the 'thyroid' package. With no current treatment plan, unless it doesn't improve in the future...so, I'm still stuck on this ridiculous 14 day cycle with no hope forthcoming, and a running joke in this house is whether to volunteer for an elective hysterectomy....not something to joke about I know! But, this 14 day cycle is really driving me insane.

And the remaining bad news from my blood tests is that, the current dose of thyroid medication is working really well...so well in fact, that I've swung from firmly hypERthyroid, to firmly hypOthyroid....which explains a lot of (hopefully *all*) the nasty new symptoms I've been experiencing, some old symptoms are back with a vengeance, and some nasty new ones have reared their ugly heads. My doctor made me promise *not* to alter my medication levels until I've been to my next endocrinologist appointment (two weeks and counting!), but I'm finding it really depressing to take my medication every morning now, knowing that instead of making me feel better, they are actively making me worse....

Thank heavens for a really understanding and totally supportive hubby, who has seen me at my absolute worst (and my absolute best, I hasten to add) and knows that the short-temper and mood swings are currently beyond my control. And bless him for not making jokes about my dry, scaly 'lizard' hands right now...yes, another symptom, because I'm really suffering from sense-of-humour failure these days, and often taking previously-funny little comments way too personally. So thank you Blogger, for providing a supportive portal, where I can get all this crap off my mind, writing to people who understand and may or may not be going through the same thing, and for allowing me to give my husband a break from venting my problems to him.

Yesterday afternoon I went out to microchip 5 dogs (I'm a qualified microchipper, and volunteer for my local SPCA) and came home to find the river had burst its banks and we were flooded (again). Ho hum...nursed my car, through the flood, to some higher ground near the paddock, and went for a wade to assess the damage. It didn't come in the house, thank DoG, but it was a close run thing. And my 2 SPCA foster dogs were in their outdoor run, balancing on the last piece of dry land they could find. So, a quick trip indoors to re-arrange things with my own 5 dogs, and I brought those 2 outdoor boys indoors. A few grumbles, and the occasional bicker over beds, but the rest of the evening passed relatively un-eventfully...this house is *WAY* too small for 7 dogs indoors, especially when one of the dogs (my own) is a grumpy, possessive terrier, with small-dog Napoleon syndrome and an attitude problem. He wanted to spend the evening hanging off the throats of the in-comers...instead, he spent the evening confined to his crate, not ideal, but safer for everybody concerned, and meant we could all relax a little more in front of the TV for the evening, as the other 6 get on really well together. The 2 'outside' boys slept in the bathroom overnight, and I was delighted to find it clean as a whistle this morning, so I can hopefully tick off the 'house-trained' box on their adoption forms at least. The floods started to recede around 5am this morning, and I could flush the toilet for the first time in over 18 hours around mid-morning today, phew! The 'outside' boys are now back outside, with their wet bedding replaced with clean, dry bedding....and their kennel and dog-run now comprising of more dry land than water features so hopefully everybody is happy. My washing machine is currently running the gauntlet of getting some more dog bedding clean and ready. The rain hasn't stopped all day, and I'm expecting the river to rise again at some point (flash floods off the nearby mountain), so I don't want to be caught short with last night's wet dog bedding.

During the week, hubby and I made a pact to quit smoking. We set the quit-time as Saturday night (tonight!). He's been out and bought himself a pack of nicotine replacement patches, and I'm straightening my own head to go it alone with will-power. So tonight we smoke our last smokes. Tomorrow we plan to wake up and go smoke-free. In the past when one has decided to quit, the other hasn't.....so we've been yo-yo quitting for a long time now, and that doesn't work. We've both proved to ourselves that we can go without, but the temptation when the other partner is lighting up is just too much after a day or two...so tonight, we finish our packs, destroy and dispose of any remaining cigarettes in the house, and go to bed to face the new day. Fingers crossed it works this time, for good! The health benefits alone make this an incredibly sensible idea, but the other basic fact is that at the moment we just can't afford to keep going. We're compromising on our food shopping budget to buy cigarettes (and that is just STUPID!), we're raiding savings accounts, and last week, the ultimate embarrassment was purchasing a packet of cigarettes after breaking into my copper coin piggy bank, and laying out the money on the shop counter in 1cent and 2cent coins...that has got to be desperate, and I want some pride back!

The weather is just too bloody awful right now to be motivated about specifically going out walking, but I'm trying to make more effort in my daily chores to do them in a more active way to compensate. I stride out with the dogs around the fields, I don't move my car from place to place in town, instead I park more centrally, and walk from bank to shop, to chemist etc. I make myself do the stuff my thyroid tells me that I can't be bothered to do, and I'm getting stuck into house-cleaning with a frenzy of activity. As soon as the weather shows any sign of breaking (just stopping raining would be good enough!) I *will* get my walking boots on, and get the hell out there!

Aww, crap, this turned out to be a loooong entry....I really need to work on perfecting those short, snappy journal updates...thanks for reading this far, if you're still awake.

Under Pressure

So, today I got the results back from my doctor regarding my 24hr blood pressure monitor...and whilst I was pleased enough with the averages, and could positively identify the causes of the 2 high spikes [full caffeine tea, and naughty (read: fighting) dogs]...my doctor was less than pleased. And whilst my 'waking' averages were what most blood pressure/hypertension websites consider the high side of normal or even mild-high, my doctor was still casting doom and gloom, looking at me like I was about to drop dead in front of her, and talking about that oh-so scary BP medication. Meanwhile nearly every BP/Hypertension website claims I'm well within the non-medication range...go figure, because I can't?

The way I look at it....I'm over-weight. I smoke. I currently lead a sedentary (computer-based) lifestyle, with my daily dog walks more closely resembling some mild wandering around the fields, whilst my (7) dogs run themselves into the ground. *I* know there are improvements I could make there, right now...and after the 24hr BP Monitor I'm determined to make some changes.
Oh yeah...I'm also hyperthyroid....and yeah, one of the many myriad of symptoms....high BP....so why do both my doctor and my endocrinologist choose to treat my (mild IMHO) high blood pressure as a totally separate issue, and rain fire and brimstone down on me, threatening imminent death....yet, lump all my other symptoms (hair loss, brittle nails, dry scaly skin, horrific periods, weight gain, mood swings, exopthalmia, chronic lethargy etc etc etc ad infinitum) into the mighty *thyroid* basket, and not treat *those* individually???
On the plus side, and there are a few, my cholesterol levels are low (DoG only knows how?), my blood glucose levels are well within range, my kidney and liver functions are good. My ECG results are consistently Good/OK, with no evidence of narrowing arteries or impending heart disease. So that rules out those doom-laden indicators that often go hand in hand with High BP.

So, how do I want to approach and face up to my (mild, I insist) high blood pressure?
- Well, I think, starting a good regular exercise plan is a good start....sure, I can't afford a gym membership, but walking costs nothing, and the gains are positive and immeasurable.
- Stopping smoking, that's a no-brainer....but easier said than done. Have done it successfully in the past going cold turkey....don't ask why I'm currently back smoking, after staying off them for over 18 months, let's just call it extreme stupidity on my part. In my experience the nicotine replacement therapies don't work for me, what does work for me is to give myself a thorough good talking to, get my head in the right place, and then stop, stop dead....before they stop me dead.
- Lose some weight. So far, I've lost 5lbs since Christmas, and that's without trying....I just need to show myself what I can do with a little more effort. My diet on the whole really isn't bad, no, honestly! (my hubby, who's been eating the same food as me for the last 10 years, is disgustingly slim, and got gold stars and heaps of praise from the medical team at his most recent workplace physical) But I could get a bit more strict with myself on portion sizes. Cut a little more fat out of the diet (cheese and mayo would be the main culprits), and for the sake of my blood pressure declare war on salt.
- Drop the caffeine. On average I probably drink 8-10 cups of tea in a normal day. I used to also find time to quaff up to 3 cans of Diet Coke a day. Combined with my total inability to pass a good coffee machine in a petrol station or shopping centre, and its hard to believe I wasn't wired to the moon 24hrs a day. Currently, I haven't had a single can of coke in several weeks. Bought my first box of thin (de-caff) tea last week, and managed to walk past a few coffee machines without engaging auto-pilot and filling up on hot coffee. Presently I'm having 1-2 cups of fat-caff tea in the morning, and then drinking thin (de-caff) tea the rest of the day. So far so good, and when the box of fat-caff teabags is finished I won't replace it, no matter how much hubby squeals.
- Drink more water, another easy no-brainer but a good habit I just can't seem to make stick. When I'm disciplined enough to fill an empty 2 litre bottle in the morning, then I'm generally disciplined enough to drink it....but often by the time I remember my good intentions its lunch time or later, and I give myself a thousand excuses as to why I can't be bothered to go fill the bottle and I promise myself to try harder the next day...you know how the story goes.

The BP Monitor results are a wake up call, and even if it involves lengthy arguing, pleading and bartering with my doctor and my endocrinologist, I'm determined to stay off BP medication...now is the time to listen to the alarm clock, and shake myself out of dreamland....!

24hr Blood Pressure Monitor

This is hell!

I'm plugged into an automatic blood pressure machine....that goes off every 20 minutes, and records my results in a little battery powered gizmo that attaches to my belt, that the nurse can download when I go back into the surgery tomorrow morning.

Every 20 minutes it inflates and cuts off all blood supply to my arm, in a death like grip, for what feels like hours.....ouch!

No idea how I'm meant to sleep with this thing going off constantly, but I am assured that between 10pm and 6am it switches to hourly checks...so I'll be able to sleep in 60 minute bursts, whoop-de-do!

Let's Talk Symptoms

I have no clue as to what is going on right now!

I feel awful, I feel grumpy, I'm snappy, my blood pressure has gone haywire, my monthly cycle has gone stupid, and is now a 14 day cycle!! I have the hands of a lizard. My hair is disgusting, its gone brittle and is falling out again.

I find my brain has once again gone to total mush. I forget what I'm saying half the time, I struggle to find simple words in conversation, which is very frustrating. I have the same conversation over and over again with my (very patient) husband, because I've forgotten that I've already told him something, sometimes I'm telling him again less than 5 minutes later. And at other times I swear blind I've told him stuff, only for that particular conversation to have actually only taken place in my own head. I forget many basic things, eg locking the door when I go out. What I've even gone shopping for when I get there.

Yesterday, even with a shopping list in my hand, I found myself wandering totally aimlessly around the supermarket, in a total dreamland. When I got to the checkout it took several minutes before I registered the fact that the girl on the check-out was asking me a question?

For the first time in years my hands and feet are constantly cold....and I'm the girl with the reputation for never getting cold feet, for wearing my flip-flops all year round, even in the snow and frost.

My right eye gets sore occasionally, a dull pain in behind the eye, and I've noticed in the mirror that the pupil in my right eye *sits* slightly differently to the left. If I'm reading a book and I close one eye, my left eye will focus on the text, but my right eye can't.

Once again I'm the pyjama-wearing slob, who just 'can't be bothered' with anything.

According to my latest bloods I'm now firmly in the hypO camp...and I'm hating it. I don't get to see my endo for another few weeks, and my doctor made me promise not to self-medicate and not to reduce my meds until I have discussed it with my endo. Which makes the morning ritual of pill taking very depressing, as I know with each pill I swallow I am making myself worse not better.

I don't know what advice I need from you all, or even what discussion I'm looking to provoke...but just being able to pour all this out to folks who might understand is very probably therapy enough. (My husband tries his best, and is an utter saint to put up with me, especially at this time, but he doesn't really understand what I'm going through)

Currently no-one seems too bothered by my goitre? There has been no further investigation since the ultrasound scan in 2004, by a different medical 'specialist'. My current endo has barely mentioned it, although its bigger now than it was 4 years ago. And the other side has started to grow a little too. Should I be pushing harder to get it investigated. Sometimes my throat hurts (aches) and often its hard to swallow, like pushing food past a brick in my throat...I'm concerned about this, heck I'm very worried about it, but seemingly neither my doctor or my endo are, so should I just relax and ignore it?

And one more thing...my hubby and I *would* like to start a family. I fully understand that while I'm on carbimazole that's a complete no-no...and I also understand that because of my thyroid problems it might not even be possible. I also need to lose a significant amount of weight. But as I'm 35 this year, we'd obviously like start trying sooner rather than later. So anyone been in that position. How long am I likely to stay on the carbimazole? What are the long term med options. Do I just give up on the dream of ever having children?

If you've made it this far, thanks for reading.

Pressure

Just received a letter from my doctor regarding making an appointment to have a 24 hour blood pressure monitor done. No idea what this involves, but we've arranged to do it on the 28th January 09

First Endo Appointment

I'm not sure we've made the best first impression with each other.

Let me explain.

I turned up at 2 o'clock, 30 minutes before my scheduled appointment time, as requested in the letter I received. I checked in and all was breezy.

I sat and read my book for an hour, and then my name was called.

The nurses weighed me, took copies of my latest blood tests, and then sent me off with a sample pot to wee in. I'd drunk so much coffee by this time that this request was easy.

I then sat back in the waiting area for another 40 mins or so, and was called again. This time they wanted to send me for an ECG...routine for new patients apparently. And so I headed off to hunt for the elusive ECG room...I hunted high and low, I followed various sets of directions from all manner of hospital staff that I came across in my travels around the maze of corridors, and after getting increasingly frustrated and irrationally angry about the whole process, I finally found it...hidden near what appeared to be some laundry rooms...of course!

ECG results back in hand, I headed back to the outpatients department, and gave them into the nurse's station.

And than I sat back down and waited....and waited....and waited.

Around 5.30pm I realised that I was the only person left in the waiting room, and that the cleaning staff were starting to converge...emptying bins and sweeping the floor. The nurses were in their room, sitting around with coffee, presumably winding down after their shift. The receptionist looked as if she was doing her final tidy-up before heading home, and she looked at me puzzled, as if she'd only just noticed I was still sitting there.
I was tired, I was grumpy, I was snappy and I was starting to get upset. Then the consultant endocrinologist himself walked into the waiting area, with his brief case, looking for all the world as if he was clocked-out and heading home. He asked me why I was still sitting there...I looked him in the eye and replied that I was waiting for my 2.30pm appointment. He looked confused, asked me my name, conferred with the receptionist, called up one of the nurses, and then, with a sigh, he turned and invited me back into his consultation room.

I must confess, I was incredibly pissed off at this point, and I went to war on him....I told him I had better things to do than sit in his waiting room for 3+ hours, and told him inconsiderate it was to keep his patients waiting so long, how we do have lives, and why bother giving out specific appointment times if they weren't going to even bother trying to stick to them.
He then started back at me, saying that occasionally appointments take longer than expected, and would I want to have a strict, timed appointment, or would I prefer to have as much time with the doctor as my particular case required, and hence why appointments can start to run late.
I explained that I understood all that, and that yes, I would be very angry if my consultant was clock-watching throughout my appointment...but seriously, going in to his consultation room at 5.45pm, when my allotted appointment time was 2.30pm was more than a little excessive!
I suggested, that instead of giving out set times, why not just work on a first come-first served basis...we spent a good 5 minutes or so shouting at each other - we were going around in circles, and he stormed out a side door, where I overheard him giving the nurses a very hard time over it all....like it was their fault, apparently...

He came back in, looking more than a little sheepish - I guess one of the nurses threw some of that flack right back at him - and suggested we start again, and try to get back on the right foot with each other.

He spent a good while going over all my recent blood tests, mumbling into his Dictaphone, and then finally addressing me with the news that I was had a classic case of Grave's Disease....a momentous occasion for us all I might add!

We talked over what that meant, what my medication should do to help, he briefly mentioned Radio-Active Iodine treatment (RAI) and also thyroid surgery, but also added in quickly that it was very possible it wouldn't come down to that, and that hopefully the medication would be sufficient to cause my thyroid to comply and go into a state of remission.
He also expressed concern over my high blood pressure, and suggested I have a 24hr blood pressure monitor done. He said he would write to my GP about this. He also wrote me a prescription for Centyl-K to help with my blood pressure - but I don't think I'll be filling it - I'm too young to be on medication for hypertension FFS!

He made an appointment for me to return in February '09. My appointment time was given as 2.15pm this time, so I joked that I should probably turn up around 5.30pm then...he had the good grace to laugh, and said "No, we won't make that mistake with you again".

Quite possibly...

...the scariest day of my life!

Despite a positive diagnosis on my thyroid, my referral to an endocrinologist still hadn't come through. I had been avoiding my GP, and going back to my 'more familiar' Ostrich approach to it all, despite several missed calls and messages to my mobile phone from my GP.

I hadn't filled my prescription for Neomercazole, AKA Carbimazole (CBZ) as money was extremely tight, and I figured it was an unnecessary expense at this time.

I knew I was ill....but sure, hadn't I been ill for years with no medication, and nothing terrible had happened had it?

Well today, was the day I learned that lesson all well and good!

The day started as any other day....tea, cigarettes....more tea, more cigarettes.....some light housework, then onto the computer to see who was up to what in Internet-land...

I had a funny pain in my back, and felt a bit nauseous...but I mostly ignored it. I think I commented on it when J came home on his coffee break...but by the time lunchtime came around I was in a full panic. The back pain was spreadingto the front of my chest, I had pins and needles in my arms, going hot and cold, huge waves of nausea, but not able to actually be sick...but the time J came home for lunch I was in all out panic mode. At this point I had Googled the syptoms for a heart attack, and went into all out hysteria as I read the list and ticked off all the symptoms one by one. My pulse was all over the place, but mostly racing. And as it slowly dawned on me that perhaps this was it, I was finally going to die....I realised I was no where near ready to die...!

J wanted to take me to the GP...I knew that we didn't have the money for an appointment, and for the same reason we couldn't afford to call an ambulance either. I was imploring him to ring our landlord, who works as a paramedic, for some solid advice on what might be going on...but he refused, insisting we went to the GP first. The row over deciding what to do was making me feel worse by the second...and I realised that whatever we did we had to do it quickly, and so we headed to my GP.

She stuck me straight onto her ECG machine...and we were both mighty relieved to see that I hadn't had, nor was I currently having, a heart attack...phew! As far as my heart was concerned all was A-OK. She did various other tests on me, drew several vials of blood from me...and concluded, from the symptoms, that I was most likely duffering from an overdose of thyroid hormone, which may or may not have been dumped suddenly on my system. And if continued unchecked I would shortly go into a full blown thyroid storm, of which two symtpoms immediately jump out at you: coma & death. Either way, she insisted that I had to start to take this seriously, I was a very ill woman and the sooner I copped on to that and started following instructions the better...for me.

You know....we filled that CBZ prescription on the way home, I started my meds that night!