It's been a while. I've been obscenely busy playing catch up.
This week flew by. I can't even remember most of it clearly. I guess I'll start with my doctor's appointment.
Basically, it's all a bit more complicated than I thought. The good news is that my dosage didn't need to be increased. I was on 75 mcg, and the next step up would probably have been 100 mcg, which is for people who don't even have a thyroid. I was getting nervous, wondering if this stupid little gland in my neck was even doing anything at all. But my dosage isn't at 100 mcg. It's now 50 mcg.
My pills are white now instead of purple. How crazy am I that I kind of miss the old ones?
Anyway, the doctor didn't like how quickly my TSH was plummeting. The thing about autoimmune disorders is that they often have upward and downward swings, and my doctor said from the very first blood test that she wasn't sure which way my levels were going. Apparently it was down. So, the not sleeping and the feverish feeling, and the insatiable appetite, they all made sense. She looked at my papers, looked back at me, and said, "You must be feeling really bad." I felt tears bite at me when she said that, but instead of giving into the string I cleared my throat. I'm sick of crying in front of strangers.
The complicated bit is that even though my TSH is coming down (which we want), my T3 is really high. We think that my T3 isn't converting to T4 (for which my levels are low-normal). So now we have to find a way to fix that. We're going to see where it is after my next blood test, which is the Monday before Thanksgiving.
In general I feel better, with far fewer headaches and no more mysterious pain in my throat. I'm not dissolving into 4-hour naps in the middle of the day, either. Of course, I'm still cold all the time (with a basal body temperature of 96.5 or so), and my weight hasn't changed. I could say that my weight not changing is a good thing, since normally I would have gained 2 or 3 pounds by now.
Also, I had a normal period this month! I don't care if it's weird of me to punctuate that sentence with an exclamation point. I haven't had a period since I started depo in November of '08. Wow, two years. I've been off depo for seven months, so it's about damn time. It's also comforting because it might mean that my thyroid is behaving the way it's supposed to, since hypo often makes you stop having your period. I'm just glad that it looks like my body is going back to normal.
I think that seeing Carla is starting to help me. She gives me things to work on between sessions. Maybe soon I'll get to a point where I can be completely honest about what's bothering me.
Also, I showed my Shakespeare prof who was boss on Thursday. He kept me after class to tell me how impressed he was. It was a humble victory, but I want to include it as a reminder.
My (potential) schedule for next semester is stressing me out. There are some days where I definitely feel "off," and I never know if it's because of my health problems, or if it's all in my head. These "off" days sometimes make it really hard for me to focus. Sometimes the headaches are so bad I can't see. Sometimes I'm so cold I can't get out of bed. It's times like these that really hurt my performance in school. I feel so guilty, because I know I could be doing better if I didn't feel so horrible. I'm thinking of only taking three classes next semester (15 credit hours) to take the edge off until I get all this thyroid stuff under control, but the thought of doing less than my peers, and less than I feel I'm really capable of, is hard for me. I'm currently signed up for 4 notoriously difficult classes, including two that I'm not very interested in (anthro and morphology). I don't think I want to take those right now. I'm entertaining the thought of keeping my two psych courses, dropping the ling and anthro courses, and replacing them with a (4-hour long) studio art class. I've never taken art before. It could be a really good outlet.
I'm still not sure though. I'm meeting with my adviser soon.
Well, it's been an hour since my pill. I guess I can go eat now.
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