A few people have been asking about how I discovered that I had an inactive thyroid due to Hashimoto’s Disease….so I thought I would document my story, in the hope that it might help others going through a similar experience.

Looking back now, it is clear that things started to go off the rails health wise about 5 or so years ago…I now know that was because my thyroid was going into overdrive!

The first thing that I really noticed that I lost a lot of weight without even trying….

I was hyper….I was hungry all the time, and I remember getting up 4am in the morning and doing getting heaps of work done, because I couldn’t sleep.

Although I was loving the fact I needed to buy new clothes, and could fit into outfits I hadn’t been able to in years, I wasn’t feeling happy.

In fact, I was miserable…I also suffered from nausea….constantly…

I ended up at my doctors in tears…so he put me on antidepressants….

Now before people start carrying on about antidepressants, they actually worked for me!

I was very nervous about going on them…I took Cymbalta…and had a week of hell while my body adjusted, but from the moment I started taking them, the chronic nausea stopped….such a relief!

This was taken during this stage, about 4 years ago…I had dropped to a size 8…was the skinniest I had been since school…

Me 2010

Then my husband started to get sicker with his auto immune disease causing more and more damage to his liver. After a couple of episodes with infection, one of which nearly killed him, he was put on to the waiting list for a liver transplant.

So I was dealing with a lot….emotionally and physically…

Due to Jas’s illness, we decided to sell our large home, and rent a small townhouse, so we didn’t have to worry about maintenance, coping with a big garden etc.

And it was around this time, that things started to “slow down” for me…the weight started to pile back on…and more… and I felt so tired all the time.

And I started to get what I know now is “brain fog”…it was like I was trying to function through a haze..the brain cells just weren’t kicking in.

I blamed the antidepressants, so decided to stop taking them. Luckily I had very little withdrawal symptoms so was off them totally within a month.

But that didn’t alleviate the symptoms…weight gain, tiredness, brain fog…plus my hair started to fall out. One weird symptom was my feet hurt…like I had broken bones….I also had tingling in my hands and feet.

And I was always so stiff and sore when I finally dragged myself out of bed in the morning.

When we moved, Jas did most of the packing etc…I found it so hard to get anything done!

Weird when you think that he was on the waiting list for a transplant, yet seemed to have more energy then me.

But I had no time to feel sorry for myself… I had to be on alert 24 hours a day in case Jas collapsed and needed to go to hospital ASAP….which unfortunately did happen more than once.

So I did as any woman did, sucked it up and carried on!

Then Jas became one of the lucky ones, and received a donor liver…just in time…and began his amazing road to recovery!

All of a sudden I didn’t need to worry all the time…he was doing just fine.

But I didn’t feel much better…people said it will be kind of a “post-traumatic” reaction to the amount of stress I went through…but that didn’t sit right with me.

I am a worrier, but deep down, I knew something wasn’t right…

I tried going to the gym, but instead of feeling better, it made me feel worse.

I had gone from a size 8 to a 12 – 14, despite eating a healthy diet.

In April 2013, we had our first real holidays in years, but instead of being well rested, and full of energy…I found it hard to keep up with my now healthy husband!

Me2013

But I am sad to say it still took a while to do something about it…and in September 2013…. I finally went to get checked from top to bottom…in a manner of speaking!

Luckily, I ended up seeing a woman doctor who I hadn’t seen before, and she was very understanding and thorough!

After a raft of blood tests etc, she called me in saying that she had found something…

My results were good in every way….except my thyroid…something wasn’t right. Indications were that it was not working properly…bingo!

So I was sent off to have another blood test about 4 weeks later, to confirm that the previous results were correct.

And they were….I was diagnosed Hashimoto’s Disease….

The plan was then to get onto the medication and things would be “fine”!

But in her wisdom, my doctor also organised for me to have an ultrasound…just to check my thryoid….but “we won’t find anything”…her words…

Unfortunately they did….

To be continued….