A few weeks before I turned 35, I felt like I was having a heart attack. My heart was beating out of my chest. I was short of breath. I couldn’t walk to the mailbox and back without becoming winded and feeling like I needed to collapse into a heap on the couch. I had a whole host of other symptoms which I’ll get to in a minute, but this list of symptoms are the ones that prompted me to call Kaiser and make an appointment.
I called the appointment line and described my symptoms to the nice lady on the phone. She went through her list of questions very carefully and hesitated on a few questions and asked for clarifying information. She finally told me I needed to drop everything and get to the nearest emergency room. I started to protest, but I have a 10 month old on my hip. But my 2 year old and 4 year old need to be picked up from pre-school in two hours. But Greg is in Sacramento and won’t be home until later tonight. But, but, but… she didn’t flinch. She told me to leave the baby with a neighbor and get to the emergency room.
I don’t remember what I did with McKinley – did I take him with me, did I drop him off with a neighbor??? I called Greg and told him he needed to drive faster to get back from Sacramento to pick up the boys from pre-school and that I was headed to the emergency room (I can’t imagine that drive home for him). Then I drove myself to the emergency room.
At the emergency room, there wasn’t much waiting especially after I answered their initial questions and told them about my phone call to make an appointment. They put me on a bed and started checking all my vital signs and pumping several bags of saline into me. I had a high heart rate – to this day it is still about 90 just sitting still. I was severely dehydrated. They pumped 4 bags of saline into me by the time I was done. They did all kinds of tests and none came out abnormal. After awhile, when I was stabilized they told me to come back into the doctor in two days when they would have the results of a few other tests, including the thyroid tests. At no point did anyone hazard a guess as to what was wrong, or at least not one that they told me about.
On my 35th birthday, I went back in and was told that I have an over-active thyroid, or in this case Grave’s disease. Most people who experience issues with their thyroid have an underactive thyroid, but I have a severely overactive thyroid.
From the Grave’s disease wiki page:
The signs and symptoms of Graves’ disease virtually all result from the direct and indirect effects of hyperthyroidism, with main exceptions being Graves’ ophthalmopathy, goitre, and pretibial myxedema (which are caused by the autoimmune processes of the disease). Symptoms of the resultant hyperthyroidism are mainly insomnia, hand tremor, hyperactivity, hair loss, excessive sweating, shaking hands, itching, heat intolerance, weight loss despite increased appetite, diarrhea, frequent defecation, palpitations, muscle weakness, and skin warmth and moistness.
My own symptoms went right down this list: I was bug-eyed and had a hugely swollen thyroid gland (or commonly referred to as a goiter), which made it hard to swallow; I had incredibly itchy skin; I ate over 2 dozen cookies and lost two pounds (I know, stop whining, right?); I was manic, but tired beyond belief. The sad part was that when I did try to go to sleep, I couldn’t sleep at all. I could hear my heart pounding in my ears and the blood rushing through my body but I couldn’t sleep a wink. My hair was falling out in clumps; I went to the bathroom all the time. I had a hand tremor like I had Parkinson’s disease. If I did actually fall asleep, I would wake up soaked. But I would dress in layers during the day because I couldn’t get warm. I remember taking the boys to a Giants game and running to catch the train and I felt like I was running in molasses and I couldn’t catch my breath. I couldn’t open jars or lift very much. The list just goes on…
All these symptoms were masked as post partum symptoms. It wasn’t until they got sooo out of whack that I made the call to go see the doctor. In the olden days, people who had hyperthyroidism usually died of heart failure. I was on that track!
They wanted to radiate the thyroid to kill it or partially radiating it to figure out how much to kill off but yet leave enough going to still function. Seemed like a losing game to me. Then the doctor recommended taking it out – that would put me on the hypothyroid side of the equation. No thanks. Seen too many people go through that. So, in the end, I decided to keep my wacky thyroid and medicate it with methimazole. I’m a terrible patient and I have worked to get off any medication, but I can’t so it has worked out to take one pill a day (for the rest of my life…).
In retrospect, I probably had hyperthyroidism (its hereditary, and is on both sides of my family) since going through puberty. The manic behavior started then, they grey hair started a little later, when I was in high school. Unfortunately, I never had any thyroid tests done then, so I have no baseline to compare my numbers with today. All I can compare are the numbers I got from my emergency room trip and the ones I get every 3-6 months.
January is thyroid awareness month (along with a few other awareness topics, like glaucoma, radon, folic acid, birth defects prevention, and cervical health). I wanted you to know how important it is to have your thyroid checked, before it becomes a problem.
