So, fun fact about hypothyroidism: if you have this condition, you get to go back in for blood testing once a month to check your levels until they even out. You’d think I’d be over my blood phobia at this point (the edges of my vision go dark any time I see red liquid) but nope. It’s just as exciting, every month.
The extra fun part about this condition is when my meds get upped. I’m still likely on too low a dose; every time they up it, I’ll feel GREAT for about a week, and then start to get tired. My feet start to crack and get gross and crusty again. I’ll wake up like clockwork in the morning, and then start to struggle.
So, here I am: dose has been upped again, 75 mcg of levothyroxine. Third time’s a charm!
If you end up with TOO much T4, you experience fun side-effects, like osteoporosis, heart palpitations, and random sweats. So, I suppose it’s better to up it slowly. But man, it’s frustrating in the meantime.
Stuff That’s Changed
Energy peaked, but again has dropped again on 50 mcg, but it’s still better than before.
Feet have gone back to being gross. Sigh. Hoping this upped dose will help with that. (Update: It did!)
Weight is unsteady; it keeps climbing randomly, then dipping.
My nails have an actual ridge in them from when I started taking meds. I can see the exact point in their growth when I started taking meds (it’s super weird.) They’re growing better and stronger now (and I like to chew them. Damn!) but you can see where they hardened up in the image here if you look closely.
Probably unrelated: my eyesight has gotten marginally better, per the eye doctor.
Verdict
It’s a fact of life that losing weight is just going to be harder for me, so I’ve hired a personal trainer and started working out every morning; I now have a month of working out 4x a week at 7:00 a.m. under my belt, and am sore as hell (it’s gotten progressively better), but we haven’t missed a workout.
The best part about this and working from home? I get to crawl back into bed and get all the cuddles afterwards. Which is necessary, because the soreness is real, ya’ll. Still, hurray for no commutes!
Future Goal: I’ll start riding my bike to and from it instead once my legs decide they’re no longer furiously angry with me.
Here’s the deal: I can look at this crap and rue the fact that this is going to be a struggle for me (WOE IS ME!), or I can suck it up and do something about it.
Men and women can be stunningly beautiful at any size, but at a certain point, their health suffers. I never, ever want to be a burden on those I love; I experienced this first-hand with my mother, for all of my life, until she passed away.
My mother’s weight (she spent the majority of her life morbidly obese) resulted in her crushing the cartilage in her knees, which left her unable to walk more than short distances. She had knee replacements, both of which went wrong (spiral fractures up her femurs and staph infections that never healed, from what I understand).
She needed help getting up single steps during most parts of her life, often from strangers because I was too small to help her myself as a wispy eight-year-old girl, and then later on she still needed the help of strangers because I was childishly embarrassed when I was a teenager. I am not proud of myself.
She carried a booster toilet seat around on any and all overnight trips away from home because it was too hard to get back up after sitting down.
She missed out on back-to-school shopping every year with me, instead needing to sit in the car, reading, while she set me loose with her credit card in a store–all because they didn’t have a scooter for her to use in department stores (I came home with a 36D bra when I was eleven–hope sprang eternal, I guess.)
She skipped several of my singing recitals because the venue had too many stairs and was not walker-friendly.
Oh, and by the way: She was in her 40’s and 50’s for a lot of this.
Camping, fishing, hiking, wandering festivals and farmer’s markets in downtown Denver–I asked my Dad when I was four why mom never joined us. Her weight was the reason why.
And then, when she needed to amputate the lower part of her leg to save her life, she was too heavy to do so, and her heart was too weak; she had to lose weight, or it would be too dangerous. By the time she finally did shed some of the weight, it was too late.
This whispering tickles in the back of my mind every day, so I choose another road: to do something about it.
I will not let obesity or a sedentary lifestyle win.
I watched my mother pass away at age sixty-six, three weeks before I was to be married, days before I got the job offer that would send me (finally) above the poverty line, when I was twenty-four years old, and her death was entirely preventable.
Things may be harder for me with this condition, but fuck it. I got this, and I will take this hill.
Sarah Snow 