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Friday, February 14, 2014

Learning to Live Without a Thyroid

Who would have thought that something as small in one's body would disrupt my life for several months??

Last fall I noticed that my hair was thinning, I was cold all of the time, and I had zero energy. (Hence no blogging and no quilting or stitching!)

I was already on a low dose of thyroid medication but knew there was something more going on. So a trip to the endocrinologist, lab work, and an ultrasound of my thyroid uncovered couple things.

My blood work uncovered extremely low vitamin D levels -- 7.8 (where 30 is the minimum they should be). So I began high doses of vitamin D -- which after about 6 weeks finally gave me enough energy to get through the day.

And, yes, the ultra sound showed that I had an enlarged thyroid with nodules. Could this possibly be the cause of my chronic cough that has progressively gotten worse over the past 7 or 8 years? At first it looked like the cough was solved. But gradually over the month or so since the surgery, I've started coughing again.  Not as much, but it's still there. ARGH! Hope I didn't go through this for nothing.

The decision was made and a month ago the thyroid came out. Surgery was pretty uneventful. But side effects of general anesthesia kept me from working full time for a couple weeks.

Now I'm adjusting to living without a thyroid -- I think I'm on the right dose of meds except I still  want to go to bed a 8:30 or 9:00 PM.

I finally got into my sewing room last Saturday and sewed one block. Hopefully tomorrow I'll  be a bit more productive with my rotary cutter and sewing machine.