Thyroid Nightmare
November 2006
Over time, I had become complacent about my diet. Feeling that my cancer ordeal was well behind me, I abandoned the stringency of my eating plan. Slowly, grains, dairy and sugar started to creep back into my diet, since I felt I was no longer in danger of a cancer recurrence. While this is definitely understandable as cancer survivors want some sense of normalcy back into their lives; it is, no doubt, a foolhardy approach to take. Yet food is the strongest “drug” out there; they don’t call it “comfort” food for nothing! After a long, stressful day, what is more soothing than meatloaf and mashed potatoes followed by a sugary dessert of apple pie and ice cream?
Around this time, I was sitting at my desk at work one afternoon and felt my eyes becoming really dry and tired. I thought this might be due to the strain of using a computer all day long or the lack of humidity in the office, yet this had been going on for several weeks. At this same time, I happened to notice a lump on the front of my neck. It wasn’t visible from the outside, but I could definitely feel it when I ran my fingers over my neck. Since I was due to retire from my job the following month, I figured I would get it checked out in the new year. Strangely, I wasn’t duly alarmed by this new lump.
November 23rd, 2006
The last day of my job finally arrived! After years of anticipating this moment, I finally felt like a prisoner sprung from jail! I could now leave the stress of a very demanding job behind me and focus on the things that I truly wanted to do. The luxury of long, unplanned days loomed before me and I reveled in the thought of now having the time to do everything that I hadn’t had the time or energy to do while I was employed. That evening, my daughter took me out to dinner to a lovely Italian restaurant to celebrate my retirement. Although we had a lovely dinner, a foreboding sense of anxiety was hanging over me and was in stark contrast to the joy that I should have been feeling at such a momentous moment in my life. Little did I know that it was an omen of the horrible year to come.
January 2007
The so-called luxury of unstructured time made me all the more aware of the gloominess of winter in Western New York. While I was working, the busyness of my days did not allow me the time to overly focus on the gray skies. Now, being housebound a good part of my day due to snowy conditions and extremely cold temperatures, I could only stare out my sliding glass door at the dull, monotone landscape of snow-covered terrain and bleak skies. There was no color to be found outside, only black, white or gray. I always knew that I was very sensitive to Seasonal Affective Disorder (a type of depression related to the changing seasons, typically starting in the fall, continuing through the winter and abating in the spring and summer.); but now there was nothing to distract me from the weather. It was in my face constantly. One day after returning from a walk in a nearby park, I was overcome with a strong feeling of anxiety, bordering on panic. This concerned me because it came out of the blue; there was no identifiable reason for it and nothing that had immediately precipitated it. I chalked it up to a sort of free-floating uneasiness surrounding the newness of my retirement and not being certain of what my new identity would be as a retired person. But these anxiety attacks would continue through the next couple of months and I found them to be very disconcerting, to say the least.
April 2007
One day while sitting in my recliner and watching TV, my head happened to be propped up in my hand and I noticed that I was shaking. I outstretched my arm and there it was: an unmistakable tremor in that hand! The tremor was in my other hand, as well. I was terrified! What horrible neurological disease was this? Parkinsons? ALS? Multiple Sclerosis? At the same time, I was now experiencing full-blown panic attacks, diminishing appetite and an inability to sleep. It seemed as if I was never tired and couldn’t relax. There was never any downtime for my body; it seemed like it was in constant overdrive and I had no way to control it. Meditation was out of the question since my mind was racing 100 miles an hour. I couldn’t escape this nightmare. This seemed to be a thousand times worse than having breast cancer. When I had breast cancer, I at least had the ability to reason things out with my mind and could find things to calm and soothe me. There was absolutely no tranquility to be found in whatever I was now experiencing. Given the symptoms I had and due to a strong history of thyroid problems in my family, I truly believed that my thyroid gland was the culprit in this situation. I made an appointment with the primary care physician I had at that time and asked to have my thyroid checked. After doing the necessary bloodwork, he said there was nothing wrong with my thyroid. My intuition said otherwise.
May 2007 - July 2007
That summer turned into one long, never-ending nightmare. I could barely eat as I had no appetite whatsoever. I had daily diarrhea first thing in the morning. I continued to shake and the tremors seemed to increase in intensity. My daughter told me that I seemed to have a glazed look in my eyes and that I just sat in my recliner and stared off into space. It was all I could do remain seated and prevent myself from screaming out in sheer panic! It was a horrible thing to not be able to escape the terror in my own mind; there was absolutely no where I could go to feel safe!!! I was sleeping very little; I would stay up quite late hoping I would eventually tire myself out, but sleep was still elusive. If I slept 4-5 hours in one night, it seemed like a major accomplishment. I had a very difficult time being around anyone other than my daughter. She knew what I was going through, but no one else did. It took too much of my energy to try to appear normal around others when I was anything but that. So I became a recluse. Since my thyroid was supposedly “normal”, I searched for other reasons for these symptoms. I blamed it on the cellphone towers that surrounded my apartment complex, yet no one else living in my apartment building seemed to be experiencing the unexplainable symptoms that I had. The truly frightening thing was when I considered suicide. If there was to be no resolution to this madness, then I knew that I could not go on living like this. This was no life at all! It was hell on earth!! Knowing I didn’t have the guts to commit suicide, I felt truly trapped in a living nightmare with no end in sight.
August 2007
I did have the presence of mind to finally schedule an appointment with a different female endocrinologist that had been recommended by a former co-worker. I wanted a second opinion as to whether or not my thyroid was misbehaving. She diagnosed me with Hashimoto’s Disease; an autoimmune thyroid condition. So it was my thyroid causing my problems after all!!! She instructed me to avoid iodine and iodine containing foods as they would only exacerbate my symptoms. My thyroid was in overdrive because antibodies were attacking my own thyroid tissue. I had years before stopped the thyroid medication because I thought the raw vegan diet would heal my thyroid. I was to learn years later that the gluten in foods that I was eating was notorious for wreaking havoc on the thyroid gland!
November 2007
I don’t know what took her so long, but the endocrinologist finally decided to do a biopsy on the lump in the front of my neck——the one that I had first discovered a year ago! The results were alarming: the large lump and several other nodules were “suspicious for neoplasm”! Was I yet to have another dance with cancer?? The endocrinologist informed me that the nodules looked “nasty” and she strongly advised me to have my thyroid surgically removed. I decided to see my new primary care physician (who happened to be a wholistic, functional doctor) to get her opinion on thyroid surgery. When she looked at the biopsy report and reviewed my medical history, she concluded that the surgical removal of my thyroid would be the wise thing to do. She said that the large lump on my thyroid was like another thyroid gland pumping out extra thyroid hormone (hence, the “overdrive” symptoms in my body and mind!). As much as I hated to lose my thyroid gland (remember how I strongly resisted doing that back in March 2003?), I came to the realization that I could no longer go on living this non-stop form of torture. I knew something drastic had to be done.