Assembled by Mary Shomon, Your Thyroid Guide
Return to Main "Letters to Oprah" Page | Oprah Awareness Campaign
"Oprah,
First of all.. I love your show!!!
I have been asked by my newsgroup to write you my story ... so here goes.
A few years ago I started to feel bloated even when I wouldn't eat for days, my stomach which had always been flat as a board had become distended and I felt awful ALL the time, I went to doctors who told me that stress was my problem. This went on for a year.
I know that stress is an invisible killer and took them seriously but then came the depression that I was insane from the stress that I didn't know how to control, because I was not getting any better.
With the bloating I had pain that reached all the way up to my throat and left me swallowing constantly and trying to clear my throat. Worst of all, I began crying uncontrollably daily because the one thing I loved most in life was taken away from me, my voice.
I talk and sing for a living, but my upper register became constricted and I acquired a warble that I couldn't control, it was hard to project anymore and my voice would crack at horrific times. I worked around it for a while by singing songs that had very little range. After a while I just stopped singing altogether and became despondent. I couldn't sing at work or at home to the songs I wrote with my husband anymore and I was so very afraid that I would succumb to the depression I was experiencing to the point of taking my life. I would just tell my self that I was being melodramatic, but I just couldn't help myself. My voice pays all the bills as well as being the biggest source of pride and joy in my life. And it was GONE!
My husband babysat me through it all and tried to keep my spirits up, but the stress was getting to him as well. Everything around me took on a dullness and I lost my energy of life altogether and he felt helpless because he has been the sole provider of my love and happiness and I could no longer respond to him, it was like he was watching a shadow.
The first Doctors I went to just prescribed tagamet type drugs for my stomach pain and told me to get a grip on my daily stress. Another doctor could see the panic in my face and ordered blood tests for me along with ultrasounds for my stomach pain and even MRI tests. The tests came back inconclusive and he too prescribed more symptom masking drugs and even suggested I change my lifestyle because he had no answers.
A client of mine, the wife of a doctor, told me of a homeopathic general practitioner MD in town who worked wonders for her. I made an appointment to see him but I couldn't get in for 9 weeks. Meanwhile we went to visit family in where my husband's cousin worked for a Blood lab, he ran some blood tests for me but he wanted to do some extensive testing that was not ordered in a regular blood panel and found all kinds of things including my thyroid level which he said was pretty far from normal.
I finally got in to see the new Doctor and before I could show him the blood test papers I was holding in my hand, he listened to all my symptoms and said to me that he thought I had a thyroid condition. I was floored!! He went on to educate me about the functions of my body parts and also found some food allergies that were causing havoc in me, but most important of all, he put me on thyroid medication. I am one of the lucky ones in that I respond well to natural thyroid medicine as opposed to the synthetic.
I felt better within a couple of weeks and after a year of feeling good, I took myself off the meds, and went into decline within days. I am no longer in denial and take my pills every day. I am so thankful to have found such a knowledgeable and caring doctor who listens and teaches. Whose diagnosis does not infer that I am out of control of my emotions with stress, but most of all I am thankful to learn that my loss of voice was the swelling of my thyroid pressing on my voice box and that with medication I can keep it healthy.
My voice is back, my life is back and my husband, who was the only thing that kept me hanging on through the whole ordeal, is happy again too.
I hope you will run a story on the dangers of undiagnosed thyroid conditions to help us get the word out to all those who are unknowingly suffering. And to get doctors to include the THS and other tests in their regular lab reports."
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