Everybody likes to take naps after school, and while it's completely normal,
taking naps even if you already slept a good eight hours during the night is alarming. This
was my wake up call that something was not working properly in my body - that something
was my thyroid.
The thyroid is a gland, present in both sexes, placed in front of the windpipe and is
butterfly-shaped. My doctor compared its function to a conductor in the orchestra because
it produces hormones that help the body control metabolism, the process in which food
that is eaten is transformed into energy. Sometimes the thyroid does not work properly and in
today's developed world that is not something that should scare us because it is possible to
take medication therapy in the form of pills. The thyroid can cause imbalance in the body if it
produces too many hormones for your body - this is called hyperthyroidism and if it produces
too little hormones - this is called hypothyroidism. There are many other diseases connected
to thyroid like Hashimoto, but I will focus on those two in this blog.
I have experience when it comes to hypothyroidism and Hashimoto and so does my
grandma, mother and older sister. I discovered this disease at the end of the eighth grade
and now I am going into my senior year of high school which gives you the perspective of
how young you can be when it starts to cause problems. When talking about this in front of
older people they mostly express their pity and how sorry they are that I have to go through
this this young. All I have to say to this is you get used to it. Of course that is unfortunate, but
I will have to fight this till I grow old and wrinkly and I do not have time to take that kind of
pity. I realized this when I looked at the statistics of how many people in the world have this
problem - 5% of the world population. I also have friends who have thyroid
diseases and somehow I have normalized it in my head. I would be lying if I said I was not
scared when I first got my blood test results back and my T4 and T3 (hormones which
doctors look at when they suspect thyroid diseases) were not at their normal levels. In that
moment I finally realized that every single “red flag” my body was giving me were actually
signals that I should do something about it. I was losing my appetite, sleeping after school
for three to five hours and somehow in all of that mess gaining weight. Now, three years later
when someone I know tells me the same symptoms the first thing I recommend is to do a
blood test for T4 and T3.
After all of my blood test results came back to my endocrinologist (doctors that study
glands) she put me on a therapy in the form of pills. They are pills that you can get only with
a doctor's prescription. I have to take one 50 mg pill every morning before eating breakfast.
The therapy you get depends on how much T4 and T3 hormones are under or above the
normal limits. My mother takes 100 mg and my grandma 75 mg. It really depends on your
personal needs. In some cases thyroid needs to be removed and again you go on a therapy
that helps your body function normally with no need to panic.
I am very aware that diseases are often taboo topics which raise fear and silence
people because many do not want to share their story no matter if this is about chronic
diseases or mental health which can be closely connected. Sharing my story to people
around me who want to listen makes me feel fulfilled because I am maybe helping someone
cross the hard mountain of fear I once had to cross. In all this, as I like to call it, mess it is
easy to forget to check up on yourself more often which can be a great help when dealing with thyroid diseases.
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