thyroid madness entry #1

     I got my thyroid pills which I have ordered in a way that is not legal. Someone heard the rattle of the contents of the padded envelop and asked me if I had ordered some more beads. Nope. No beads here. Just questionably legal drugs I'm taking without a doctor's consent or prescription because I can't find a doctor who will listen to me talk about my thyroid symptoms without telling me that I'm just depressed. (Also, in the UK these are sold as over-the-counter, so suck it.) I'm not depressed, I'm pissed as hell because I've spent the past year with horrible symptoms- all of which are indicative of hypothyroid. Just to have my doctors blow me off at appointments, lose my test results, tell me my labs didn't come out right, make me retake the labs, lose my literal blood (thanks intern Dracula), and then take two fucking months to have my test results in. Then they tell me that nothing came up in my results, I'm perfectly normal and that all of my symptoms, including:

• fatigue
• violent periods
• brainfog
• joint pain
• sleeping all the time
• being unable to fall asleep without medication
• weight loss 
• dry, cracking skin
• constipation
• chronic head aches
• memory loss
• no sex drive/inability to have sex at all 
• low body temperature
• discomfort while swallowing
• nausea
• inability to properly absorb iron and vitamin d
• exhaustion
• irritable moods (though honestly I don't think is a symptom of hypothyroid so much to say that someone has a chronic illness or pain, for years at a time, they will be in a horrible mood, because truly, if you felt as sick as I do every day all day with no improvement- you would be miserable. everyone would be miserable. it's the inescapable consequence of any chronic illness. it makes your entire life miserable.)

 which pretty much every one agrees are symptoms of hypothyroid... are a result of my being sad and pathetic and needing to be put on zoloft STAT, because maybe if they put me on enough antidepressants, I will be so brain dead that I will no longer be able to call them up and complain about the treatment I am not getting. I've also found that some of my symptoms, such as my headaches, chronic pain, and heavy periods I've had ever since I was very young! Goodness, having a thyroid problem might actually explain why I've had these problems for so long, and why I haven't improved while on birth control or medications for chronic headache. Maybe I'm not a 'tough case' for these issues, maybe they weren't the cause of the problems to begin with. What a thought that I might have one big problem instead of a schmillion other problems that all magically happened to me *at the same time* for *no real reason*. It makes so much sense when you think about it, the only thing that doesn't make sense is why nobody has ever so much as put the puzzle pieces of my chronic health problems together. C'mon, even an episode of House isn't this obvious. So I'm taking the thyroid pills. They are dissected thyroid, which is basically ground up pig thyroid. Which some might say is gross. I don't care if it is. If  it helps, I don't care what it is or where it comes from. But according to the site, the pigs were organic, grass fed and free range. At least my medication is pesticide free.

        Someone will tell me that self-medicating is wrong and I will tell them to fuck themselves because I'm suffering so much that I'm about to prescribe myself one bullet directly into the brain if I don't get some relief soon. Man, back in the day I used to take pills for fun and now I take them because I am really sick and even though nothing my doctor has given me has proven to help at all, at least I am trying. I keep saying back in the day when I really mean two or three years ago. The time from when I was 18-21 has passed me so quickly and I spent all of it in a whirlwinds of pain and suffering. Hopefully this will work, or at least work partially. I'll take on tenth of a work. That will OK with me. These pills smell kinda gross but honestly, the only pills I have that don't smell a little funky are my b12 supplements that are 'cherry' flavored, and don't taste like cherry but like sugar even though they are sugar free. They don't taste like aspartame either, though. Weird. The only pills I've ever had that didn't have some kind of odor were the antidepressants I took to suppress my migraines which gave me a laundry list of awful symptoms and the withdrawl from hell. So I have the thyroid medication next to me. But I'm not going to take it just yet, I am going to be patient and calm myself the fuck down and approach this logically even though, the idea of feeling better alone is something to literally lunge at.

       You're only supposed to take them on an empty stomach and you shouldn't take them with iron or other vitamin supplements because those can bind with the thyroid hormone. You should also start slow and work your way up. So I have devised a plan:

• I will take my b12, D, and iron before I go to bed. 
• I will take my thyroid pills when I wake up with some tea. 
• Then I will eat a few hours later. Usually I just have like, a high fiber cereal, toast, tea (or second cup of tea, possibly third by then) and some fruit for breakfast. Occasionally bacon if I'm not too tired but lol I am always tired and that's why I'm taking these pills to begin with. 

         I don't want to take them before I go to bed, usually because I'm up eating cake all night, and also because I want to be *awake* for the duration of being able to witness feeling better. So I guess I will just have to calm the fuck down and put off eating for a couple hours.