Assembled by Mary Shomon, Your Thyroid Guide
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"Hi, I've been suffering from hypothyroidism for about two years now. I am just in the last two or three months starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel, as my thyroid medication is getting fine tuned. Until then, my normally energetic self (I wrote a textbook, taught four college courses, planned my wedding AND sewed our matching shirts, and rewrote a novel to ready it for sending to the publishers...it's coming out next week) was sliding into crawl. I gained weight, I huffed on the way uphill and slowed on my 6 km walks, even though I'd quit smoking a year before and USED to take the hills at a run while smoking half a pack a day.
My hair was clogging the drains, my skin was sallow, and I couldn't remember words...in the middle of lectures.
Doctors told me I was "turning forty, get used to it."
Since my mother had been a vibrant and active woman all her life (and had been a new mom at my age..she was 37 when she'd had me), I figured that was malarkey. If I wasn't so sick and tired, I would get around to finding a doctor who would do something.
It took four doctors. One diagnosed me as hypothyroid while looking at my anemia, another put me on Synthroid, and yet another moved me onto natural thyroid. I'm starting to feel more like my old self. I've dropped ten pounds, we're moving, I'm teaching a full load, acting as writer-in-residence at the local elementary school and starting another novel.
So, please think seriously about doing a show on hypothyroidism. There are an awful lot of us out there thinking that maybe those doctors are right, and life after 40 just isn't worth bothering with. I think it just might be."
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