It's kind of hard to believe that I've actually already been on my medication for 30 days. I took the final pill in my first vial this morning, immediately upon waking, and washed it down with lots of water, as per the directions. And also, as per the directions, no food for at least half an hour. No calcium or iron supplements for at least four, which means no more multivitamin/fish oil/iron pill supercombo in the morning anymore. There's a lot to remember when you have to put these chemicals in your body every day, and to some extent, it's changed the way I live. I used to religiously take my vitamins every morning after breakfast, but now I can't, since breakfast is usually not eaten four long hours after I wake up and take my pill. And I can't take Centrum anymore, because that has an iodine supplement in it, and iodine, beyond what is found in salt or other naturally-occurring sources, is no longer allowed for me. I've started taking prenatal vitamins again, for a couple of reasons: 1.) That was what they gave us in Peace Corps and I grew to like them. 2.) No iodine component to potentially mess up my thyroid medication. 3.) Prenates make your hair grow, and that remains, even after 30 days of pills, a pretty large problem for me.
The first few days on the meds I was all energy, all the time. It was like I had had four or five cups of coffee, or shots of espresso, all day long. I kind of loved it, actually - I was able to get a lot done and I didn't need to nap or sleep 9 or 10 hours a night. My heart felt like it was beating too quickly at times, sure, but I felt great. Very... caffeinated.
That's worn off some after a month. I don't really need to nap anymore during the day, but while I could get away with 6 hours of sleep some nights at the beginning of the month, by the end I was once again in my "I need at least 8 hours of sleep to function" mode. I remain pretty energetic in the mornings right after I take my pill: usually what I do right after I wake up is clean the kitchen because I feel compelled by some weird energy to get that done, RIGHT AWAY, the minute I get out of bed. I haven't even tasted coffee yet and I'm vacuuming, doing dishes, and scrubbing the stove. The daily clean kitchen is thanks to the meds.
(In some ways, this also might be because I need to have at least some sense of accomplishment for the day, and walking away with a clean kitchen every morning is one way to convince myself that my life is not a total waste, that I am a person who gets things done. This, however, is probably more psychological than medical, and most likely deserves a blog of its own.)
So while my energy level has come back down to "normal" - comps, grad school, and constant pressure might have something to do with that - I'm still feeling quite a bit better in this respect. I'm more energetic and I can stay awake all day. For this, I'm thankful. It's a really nice change.
I've also lost a bit of weight, I think. I don't weigh myself too often, but this month I felt like my weight didn't fluctuate as wildly as it has in the past. I still exercise daily and eat pretty well (moments of weakness include eating fat-free frozen yogurt), but for a long time - as long as I can remember since I started exercising daily in 2003 - my weight wouldn't really change. It was frustrating. I worked so hard and never saw effects. I railed against those stupid women's health magazines that promised to be able to peel away pounds if you just worked hard enough. I thought it was a load of crap - I worked hard! All the time! And I never really lost weight. I've been a fairly steady 130 pounds for... years. And while most of it is muscle, I always thought that, for a 5'4" frame, it was a bit too much.
So while I don't know how much I weigh at the moment, I feel smaller, a bit lighter. I'm not able to work out as much as I'd like right now since comps have whittled my free time down to precious few hours, but I feel like I'm not retaining as much water and that the work I do at the gym or on the roads has started to change my body. Basically, I feel like I'm actually benefitting from my daily exercise the way the body is SUPPOSED to benefit from daily exercise, rather than just plateauing and resisting change.
So this all sounds great, right? More energy, lost weight... the meds must be working! And to a certain extent, they absolutely are. I still feel really thankful that I have a condition that can be aided or healed by taking one little pill every day. I continue to realize how lucky I am.
The problem is the continued hair loss. LOTS of continued hair loss.
My scalp looks better, I can freely admit this. The part in my hair looks less wide, those frightening bald-looking spots less noticeable. My hair feels healthy (no dye!) and looks okay (well, it would if I knew how to style it). But it still comes out all the time. Large handfuls of strands come out in the shower when I wash and condition my hair. I can't run my fingers through it without more strands coming out. Fine blonde hairs cover all my clothing, the carpet, my bed. I'm shedding as much as my dog, which is saying something.
I have a lot of new hair that I can see, short little strands popping up around my part and on the top of my scalp, and maybe this is one reason why I'm still losing so much mature hair. My hair is also growing much more quickly (probably due to the daily prenatal vitamin), and it's grown to a length that hits below my chin MUCH faster than it normally does. But it also falls out just as quick, and it seems to me that it's the longest, thickest strands that come out in the shower - the ones that I have the fewest of! Every time I shampoo and can pull out between 15 and 30 strands of fought-for hair, I just want to cry.
I go back to Dr. Thomas on 10/15, less than a month from now. I'll tell her what's going on and see if I need a higher dose of the meds. I don't believe that I have Aunt Linda's alopecia - certainly I'd be farther along the path to baldness if I did, and my body hair would be falling out too, which isn't happening - but something is still wrong. I just want to be able to run my hand through my hair and not have it then covered in strands that fall out at the slightest touch. Call me vain, and though I'm very thankful for the increased energy and moderate weight loss, the hair loss remains the part that hurts the most. I don't have much hair - I never have - so I'm very protective of these few fine strands that are mine.
Saturday, September 18, 2010
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Good News, a rarity
The good news is that the headaches were, seemingly, caused by imbibing wine, not by the medication, and the foggy grogginess that muffled my head every morning was more likely caused by my late-term cold than the little purple pills I have to take. So that's some pretty good news, right? My meds are hardly affecting me at all - it's only the unsurprisingly poor life choices I've made recently that have affected my health negatively. Drinking will lead to hangovers when you wake up, and going to a gym, no matter what kind of 'commitment to cleanliness' they purport to have, will most likely lead to getting a cold if you touch a germ-ridden machine or barbell and then touch something on or near your face. Life lessons learned. Moving on.
I was talking to my sister yesterday about my new condition, and L., who is medically knowledgable, asked if Dr. Thomas has explained to me why she thought I developed hypothyroidism, which is more commonly seen in older women. I told L. that I hadn't even thought to ask, that my conversation with Dr. Thomas was brief and I, for the most part, was kind of in shock and could only give her the phone number of the local CVS before we hung up and I had a chance to actually realize what was going on. Since I'll be back in the doctor's office in 8 weeks, I made a mental note (that I will hopefully remember) to ask her about it then. After all, it is a pretty damn relevant question: why DID I develop hypothyroidism at age 27?
I can't seem to find any simple answers online (not like that's a huge surprise), though I did find out that the American Thyroid Association is located in nearby Falls Church, VA. I wonder if I could contact them, take a tour of their location. Do they need a spokesperson? I could use the extra cash...
But seriously, what I did learn was that no one is immune from thyroid problems. Though it's more common in women than in men, younger women are likely to get the condition as well. And I'm thankful that we caught this early, Dr. Thomas and I. I'd hate to think of what my head might look like had I not seen the doctor when I did. And I'd hate to have to face comprehensive exams with no energy whatever, no ability to concentrate. So I have hypothyroidism at 27. It's treatable. I can live with this. And getting diagnosed now is way better than being bald at tired by 30.
I was talking to my sister yesterday about my new condition, and L., who is medically knowledgable, asked if Dr. Thomas has explained to me why she thought I developed hypothyroidism, which is more commonly seen in older women. I told L. that I hadn't even thought to ask, that my conversation with Dr. Thomas was brief and I, for the most part, was kind of in shock and could only give her the phone number of the local CVS before we hung up and I had a chance to actually realize what was going on. Since I'll be back in the doctor's office in 8 weeks, I made a mental note (that I will hopefully remember) to ask her about it then. After all, it is a pretty damn relevant question: why DID I develop hypothyroidism at age 27?
I can't seem to find any simple answers online (not like that's a huge surprise), though I did find out that the American Thyroid Association is located in nearby Falls Church, VA. I wonder if I could contact them, take a tour of their location. Do they need a spokesperson? I could use the extra cash...
But seriously, what I did learn was that no one is immune from thyroid problems. Though it's more common in women than in men, younger women are likely to get the condition as well. And I'm thankful that we caught this early, Dr. Thomas and I. I'd hate to think of what my head might look like had I not seen the doctor when I did. And I'd hate to have to face comprehensive exams with no energy whatever, no ability to concentrate. So I have hypothyroidism at 27. It's treatable. I can live with this. And getting diagnosed now is way better than being bald at tired by 30.
Monday, August 23, 2010
Days 3 and 4: The Battle of Sleep
I have now taken this little purple pill for, what, 4 days now I guess, and things have been looking up. My hair falls out less and less. It does not come out when I run my fingers through my hair (getting over the terror I used to feel whenever my own hand or someone else's approaches my head is another story, however), and fewer and fewer strands come out in the shower. Cleaning off the hair brush Dickson and I share, the blonde tangle of hairs that I'd have to remove every few days has considerably reduced in size, and the knot is composed of more of Dickson's thick brown hairs and fewer of my fine blonde ones.
Looking at that photo of myself that I had mentioned before - the one where I'm armwrestling my friend Kim at the brewery in Denver, CO, and the top of my head is visible exposing the thinning hair - I'm able to feel less horrified by it. I mean, the hair loss is bad, or at least it looks bad to me (to others, I'm sure it would look like I am overreacting), but now that things are improving, I can look at this photo, this little image of myself in July, with a sense of distance so I'm no longer as afraid. Both me and my head have moved on. This must be what looking at old x-rays of the tumor feels like to a cancer patient who is either recovered or is on their way there.
(Yes, I realize that comparing treatable hair loss associated with hypothyroidism with cancer is, at the very least, an unfair comparison, and this isn't meant to make anyone currently or previously battling the disease feel belittled - it was just the first metaphor that came to mind. I should probably erase that whole paragraph. Oh well.)
So as the hair begins to improve, how else has taking 75 MCG of Levothyroxine (the generic form of Synthroid - what a cute name! Synthetic Thyroid = Synthroid! But I opted for generic since I'm cheap) a day done to me? I don't know why I hadn't googled the name of the medication before, but it seems that other side effects I can potentially expect include:
- weight loss
- tremor
- headache
- nausea
- vomiting
- diarrhea
- stomach cramps
- nervousness
- irritability
- insomnia
- excessive sweating
- increased appetite
- fever
- changes in menstrual cycle
- sensitivity to heat
- temporary hair loss, particularly in children during the first month of therapy
Being a woman in the United States, I would not be opposed to any form of weight loss, particularly drastic and/or transformative, but as far as the other side effects are concerned, this is what I'm feeling: I do wake up every morning with a slight headache. Now, the problem is that I just had a pretty fun weekend, in which I consumed some drinks. Could the headaches be caused by drinking, as opposed to the drug? This is a possibility, and today is my control day to test the theory. As school is right around the corner, I will no longer allow myself to drink on weeknights (one glass of wine or one beer is acceptable), saving any really intensive drinking (multiple glasses of wine, etc) for the weekend. Tonight I will most likely not have any wine at all, since I've had my fill this weekend. If I wake up tomorrow morning with a headache, I'll know that this slightly stuffy, sort of hung-over-y feeling that I wake up with nearly every day is caused by my little purple pills, not my unattractive habit of drinking too much red wine.
It's the other side effect that caught my eye: insomnia. My entire life, I have NEVER had a problem sleeping. Falling asleep, staying asleep, waking up on time, and, more recently, sleeping too much - none of these things were ever issues. I can fall asleep quickly, sleep soundly, and wake up fairly refreshed. And, of course, in the past few months I was sleeping a lot, including taking a nap most afternoons.
My sleep cycle hasn't been drastically affected so far. I'm still getting between 7 and 8 hours a night (usually 8). Generally, I still fall asleep quickly, and stay asleep all night. When the alarm clock goes off, I get up. Save for the muffled headaches I've been experiencing, I wake up feeling pretty good.
The problem (well, maybe 'problem' is too strong a word) is that I'm constantly buzzed now that I'm on the meds. I have maybe too much energy. I feel the way I did when I was young, and the way I felt when I first started working out every day: that constant stream, or source, or something, of energy that runs through me all the time. Right now, for example, at noon, I'm actually kind of tired. I went to bed late last night after binging on Season 3 of 'Lost' (I finished the DVDs and watched three episodes after Dickson went to sleep) and then googling a bunch of things I wanted to know more about. I probably crawled into bed at 12:30am, and laid there until 8am, even though when my alarm went off at 7, I was actually able to get up. I just knew that my body needed rest and I forced myself to lay there until 8. I dozed a bit but my mind was already running. I started thinking about what I had to do that day, how Dickson might have used all the quarters to do his laundry and I'd have to get change from the bank to do mine. How I needed to get to the grocery and I desperately needed to stop putting off writing another section of this paper and just get my ass in gear and finish it. And start reading for comps. And do all this other stuff. This is what my mind was doing when I was laying in bed on a cool pleasant late-summer morning, trying to "sleep."
I am no longer tired anymore, really ever. But sometimes I can feel that my body is tired. I worked out hard this morning, and I worked out hard yesterday. And then I just keep going after I work out, accomplishing whatever needs to be finished during the day. And my mind is constantly running. So even though I feel a vague and distant sensation that I might be "tired," I can't do anything about it. Instead, I read for class, or vacuum. What would have knocked me out for an hour before is now seen as just another task to get finished before I move on to the next thing.
Is this a blessing, or a curse?
Looking at that photo of myself that I had mentioned before - the one where I'm armwrestling my friend Kim at the brewery in Denver, CO, and the top of my head is visible exposing the thinning hair - I'm able to feel less horrified by it. I mean, the hair loss is bad, or at least it looks bad to me (to others, I'm sure it would look like I am overreacting), but now that things are improving, I can look at this photo, this little image of myself in July, with a sense of distance so I'm no longer as afraid. Both me and my head have moved on. This must be what looking at old x-rays of the tumor feels like to a cancer patient who is either recovered or is on their way there.
(Yes, I realize that comparing treatable hair loss associated with hypothyroidism with cancer is, at the very least, an unfair comparison, and this isn't meant to make anyone currently or previously battling the disease feel belittled - it was just the first metaphor that came to mind. I should probably erase that whole paragraph. Oh well.)
So as the hair begins to improve, how else has taking 75 MCG of Levothyroxine (the generic form of Synthroid - what a cute name! Synthetic Thyroid = Synthroid! But I opted for generic since I'm cheap) a day done to me? I don't know why I hadn't googled the name of the medication before, but it seems that other side effects I can potentially expect include:
- weight loss
- tremor
- headache
- nausea
- vomiting
- diarrhea
- stomach cramps
- nervousness
- irritability
- insomnia
- excessive sweating
- increased appetite
- fever
- changes in menstrual cycle
- sensitivity to heat
- temporary hair loss, particularly in children during the first month of therapy
Being a woman in the United States, I would not be opposed to any form of weight loss, particularly drastic and/or transformative, but as far as the other side effects are concerned, this is what I'm feeling: I do wake up every morning with a slight headache. Now, the problem is that I just had a pretty fun weekend, in which I consumed some drinks. Could the headaches be caused by drinking, as opposed to the drug? This is a possibility, and today is my control day to test the theory. As school is right around the corner, I will no longer allow myself to drink on weeknights (one glass of wine or one beer is acceptable), saving any really intensive drinking (multiple glasses of wine, etc) for the weekend. Tonight I will most likely not have any wine at all, since I've had my fill this weekend. If I wake up tomorrow morning with a headache, I'll know that this slightly stuffy, sort of hung-over-y feeling that I wake up with nearly every day is caused by my little purple pills, not my unattractive habit of drinking too much red wine.
It's the other side effect that caught my eye: insomnia. My entire life, I have NEVER had a problem sleeping. Falling asleep, staying asleep, waking up on time, and, more recently, sleeping too much - none of these things were ever issues. I can fall asleep quickly, sleep soundly, and wake up fairly refreshed. And, of course, in the past few months I was sleeping a lot, including taking a nap most afternoons.
My sleep cycle hasn't been drastically affected so far. I'm still getting between 7 and 8 hours a night (usually 8). Generally, I still fall asleep quickly, and stay asleep all night. When the alarm clock goes off, I get up. Save for the muffled headaches I've been experiencing, I wake up feeling pretty good.
The problem (well, maybe 'problem' is too strong a word) is that I'm constantly buzzed now that I'm on the meds. I have maybe too much energy. I feel the way I did when I was young, and the way I felt when I first started working out every day: that constant stream, or source, or something, of energy that runs through me all the time. Right now, for example, at noon, I'm actually kind of tired. I went to bed late last night after binging on Season 3 of 'Lost' (I finished the DVDs and watched three episodes after Dickson went to sleep) and then googling a bunch of things I wanted to know more about. I probably crawled into bed at 12:30am, and laid there until 8am, even though when my alarm went off at 7, I was actually able to get up. I just knew that my body needed rest and I forced myself to lay there until 8. I dozed a bit but my mind was already running. I started thinking about what I had to do that day, how Dickson might have used all the quarters to do his laundry and I'd have to get change from the bank to do mine. How I needed to get to the grocery and I desperately needed to stop putting off writing another section of this paper and just get my ass in gear and finish it. And start reading for comps. And do all this other stuff. This is what my mind was doing when I was laying in bed on a cool pleasant late-summer morning, trying to "sleep."
I am no longer tired anymore, really ever. But sometimes I can feel that my body is tired. I worked out hard this morning, and I worked out hard yesterday. And then I just keep going after I work out, accomplishing whatever needs to be finished during the day. And my mind is constantly running. So even though I feel a vague and distant sensation that I might be "tired," I can't do anything about it. Instead, I read for class, or vacuum. What would have knocked me out for an hour before is now seen as just another task to get finished before I move on to the next thing.
Is this a blessing, or a curse?
Saturday, August 21, 2010
Day 2: Or, how to Fight Hypothyroidism with a Hangover
I guess this is a good sign of things to come: I got home around 2:30 am, stayed up until about 3, and woke up at 8:30 am feeling like I had slept enough and was ready to start the day. It's now a little after 9 am, and after editing the last post and deciding to start on this one, these past forty minutes have been productive. I took two ibuprofin and my medication this morning along with a big bottle of water in which I poured a packet of generic Emergen-C. My head is vaguely foggy and I'm still getting over a cold, which I think I gave to Dickson. But I feel good! I had a lot of fun last night, getting dinner with Kim, hanging out with friends until late, getting a ride home from Kim, hanging out with Dickson when I got in. And now the real test will take place: has hypothyroidism been the culprit behind so many extended hangovers in the past? Will my magical purple pills allow me to get through the entirety of this Saturday with vim and vigor, and without a nap? Am I placing way too much pressure on these pills to cure everything that is wrong in my life? The imagined 9 am answers to these questions are, at the moment: Yes, yes, and absolutely yes. Oh, we'll see what the future holds.
Friday, August 20, 2010
Diagnosis, Medication, Treatment, Understanding: Day 1
I went to Dr. Thomas at the Capitol Hill medical clinic on Wednesday afternoon after waiting for two and a half weeks for my appointment. She was the only doctor who was even able to see me; other clinics in my area (I wanted to be able to walk to the doctor's office) were booked until September. And it's not as though my condition were life-threatening. I was just concerned about the hair loss, and the sluggishness was increasing, even though the hours of sleep I got each night were also going up. I wanted to know what was wrong, especially before the semester begins (and preparation for my comprehensive exams continues) in just a few days.
So Wednesday at 2:30 pm finally came and I rode my bike the four blocks over to the clinic. It is a comically old building, so old that I was taken a bit aback at first. If the building looked like it was going to fall apart, what kind of medical treatment was I going to receive? But whatever, it was next to a hospital (the Speciality Hospital of Washington), and Dr. Thomas got good reviews online (like that means anything) and I was desperate to see a professional, so I went in.
I walked up rickety old steps to the second floor, passing signs that read things like "Do NOT sit on top of the heater - the cover is broken!" and "DON'T BLOCK THE STEPS" and walked down a Pepto Bismol pink hallway that had a few framed prints by Renoir and Monet. I looked at the one by Renoir, "Two Young Girls at a Piano," for a second before I walked into Dr. Thomas's office. It looked peaceful. I thought, this is what life was like before modernism, or at least postmodernism. When French men could paint scenes like this and become famous. How weird.
A woman behind the desk photocopied my driver's license and insurance ID and gave me a stack of papers, all of which looked like they were typed up by a typewriter in 1989 and photocopied endlessly since, for me to fill out in the waiting room. I sat down on an old chair and began to fill in my name, lucky that I brought my own pen since the receptionist was out, and looked around. I was with three other people: a large woman who listened to her iPod so loudly I could hear the dance/hip hop she was playing, and an older woman and her teenage son. The son had long dreads and looked horribly uncomfortable. His mother ate a bag of hot fries, those spicy little potato stick things, and looked unconcerned. On the TV was an afternoon news show with a vaguely attracted middle-aged man and woman bantering excitedly about nothing, all of which was the stupidest thing I had ever heard. There were a few magazines scattered around on low coffee tables shoved into the corners. No one read them. They either watched TV or listened to the iPod, or listened to the other woman's iPod, as I did. Which I didn't really enjoy.
The paperwork asked for my history, my insurance, the start date of my last period, why I was in there, etc etc etc. Other information requested included my family history of medical defects, which I abbreviated to include only the most serious. I noted the heart problems, cancer, and thyroid issues in the rest of my family, citing members who had already died of these diseases. And I wrote in on 'other' that my aunt has full-body alopecia. which is what I feared that I had when my hair started falling out rapidly and with a seeming vengeance a few months ago.
That was the real reason I was here, after all: the hair loss. Online sources say that female hair loss is more of a pride thing than anything else. It hurts our femininity, and that makes us sad. I was reticent to agree, laughing at these online generalization of womanhood, but agreed anyway, even though I wouldn't allow myself to believe that I did. Losing my hair - my fine, pathetic hair that doesn't grow and I don't know how to style and it always looks terrible - would hurt me very badly. Maybe it's a pride thing after all, and maybe I'm more of a traditional female than I thought. To participate in making sweeping generalizations about gender and sex, if I lost my hair, I would feel pretty terrible. It would be hard for me to leave the apartment. For a man, and particularly for an older man, it's part of life, part of genetics. For a woman it was embarrassing, like I had done something wrong. Had I? I thought about photos I had seen of myself from my trip to Colorado in July: I was armwrestling with a friend (it's a long story) and someone took a photo of me winning, of me taking her down, and my whole body is leaning towards the camera, the top of my head visible. And the hair is thinning to an embarrassingly noticeable degree. I was starting to go bald. Since most people are taller than me, I began to wonder why no one said anything. Maybe they were embarrassed about it too.
But, I joked to myself, I always looked good in wigs. And wigs you don't really need to style, the way you need to do hair every day. I could deal with it if my hair all fell out at once and I could just go to the wig store, pick one out, and go home. The next day, I'd look like a hair model. A plastic hair model.
Rather than just accept this fate, however, I tried to figure out what I could do on my own. It was my hair stylist, Molly, who said that my thyroid might be the issue. She was cutting my hair in late July and was concerned with how easily it wrested away from my skull, how much was missing up top. It wasn't anemia, because I had been taking iron pills for a year or more now. It wasn't that my hair was unhealthy because I dyed it too much, even though it was before - the prolonged contact with Sun-In hadn't done my hair any favors. But I had given up hair dye, gone cold turkey, and I hadn't hanged its color in over a year. The hair that remained was soft and healthy and shiny (and the mousy blondish-brown that I had dyed away for so many years). But it fell out all the time. Frightening numbers of strands would come out in the shower. Every time I ran my hand through my hair, anywhere between five and twenty strands would be entangled in my fingers. I hated it. I tried not to touch it, thinking that if I just left my hair alone, it would stop falling out. I brushed it once a day and that was it. I thought to myself, if you leave it alone, everything will be fine.
Well, what a load of crap. Leaving my hair alone didn't help anything. It was self-deception, my way of coping with something I was scared of, and I was scared. I was really scared of going bald.
Instead, when I decided to actually be proactive about some things, I made my appointment with Dr. Thomas and looked around online to see what I could do in the meantime. I noted that a lack of iodine in the diet has negative effects on the thyroid and could be the cause of some hair loss. I realized that my diet was about 100% iodine deficient. Our salt wasn't iodized. My multivitamin, that I took daily, had no iodine. And I rarely ate fish or seaweed because there is a shocking lack of sushi restaurants in Capitol Hill (why is this? We finally got a frozen yogurt place. Why no sushi?). So I bought iodized salt, added it in all the places I normally added salt, and started taking a multivitamin with 100% of my daily value of iodine. Within the week things started to improve: less hair came out when I washed it in the shower, fewer strands in the hairbrush, even fewer in my hands as I ran them, oh-so-tentatively at first, through my hair. Wow!, I thought to myself. This is fabulous! I have this whole thing taken care of!
Then I went to the doctor.
Sigh.
In Dr. Thomas's office, after I had filled out the paperwork I decided to go use the bathroom so I could take a few deep breaths by myself before I had to hear what devastating news the doctor might potentially have. I handed the clipboard to the receptionist and asked her where the bathroom was - down the hall, right next to the Renoir. At first I thought the door was a trick: no door knob, and I couldn't see any hinges. And it wouldn't open. It was stuck shut. I tried pushing it inwards, then pulling it to one side and the other thinking that the door was on rollers somehow. Nothing worked. I thought I had the wrong door, but the sign above it said "Restroom" and was definitely referring to the mystery door. Then, from inside the mystery door's room, I heard a toilet flush and someone wash turn on and off the sink. The door pulled inwards and out came the young guy with dreads. He had a little plastic cup of his urine in one hand, and was really embarrassed to see me standing there. We negotiated the tiny hallway and he went and sat down in a room to my left. I wondered what he had to pee in a cup for. It made me realize that other people's problems will always dwarf mine, and I suddenly became very embarrassed that I was at the doctor because I was feeling vain.
After I used the bathroom I sat back down in the waiting room. The iPod woman was called out. When I sneezed a few times, the older potato stick-eating woman said 'Bless you' and then turned back to the TV. I waited for about five more minutes when a Haitian woman took me into an examining room, took my blood pressure and pulse, and, as I turned my head so I wouldn't see, drained two vials of my blood. There was a photo of a sheltie on her wall, so while she was taking my blood we talked about dogs. Her sheltie was named Beethoven and she had a few prints by Van Gogh on her wall, around the picture of her dog. I thought, this is a very classically-oriented doctor's office. Wow.
The Haitian nurse asked me if I needed a pelvic exam, which I did not. I told her about the hair, and the tiredness, and she took me into a different examining room and told me I could wait there for the doctor. The room was made for pelvic exams, which always makes for an uncomfortable waiting period, staring at those stirrups. Dr. Thomas came in, checked my vitals again, had me breathe a few deep breaths, listened to my story about the hair loss and the tiredness and all the other things, felt my throat, and told me that she didn't see or feel or hear anything wrong. In fact, I was really healthy. She'd get the blood results back by Friday at the latest and call me if anything was wrong. I was supposed to keep taking the multivitamin with iodine. Things were probably okay.
So when she called me back less than 24 hours later, she at least noted that what I have is not severe. My hypothyroidism (underactive thyroid, the gland that controls metabolism) is mild or moderate. There are numbers involved - Dr. Thomas mentioned them on the phone - though I don't know what they corresponded too. A normal thyroid is between 1 and 4, preferably around 2 or 3. Mine is at 8. 8 what? I don't know. But 8 is bad. She got the results of my blood test back and wanted to get me on medication right away, a low dose of some hormone, and I was to stop taking the iodine immediately and get on these pills just as fast.
She also phoned the prescription into the CVS two blocks away for me, which was nice. She said that I had to take pills daily, a pill every day for eight weeks, and then come back and see her and "we'll see how we're doing." I like how doctors always use 'we' when talking about individual patient conditions. SHE doesn't have hypothyroidism (or does she?) so it's not OUR condition. But we'll still see how WE are doing in two months. It makes me feel like I'm part of a team.
I went back to the computer and looked up hypothyroidism. I thought it was funny that I have hyPOthyroidism, since I also have hypoglycemia. Everything is low with me. Once, when I was about 15, I went to the doctor because I was shaking all the time. I had eaten lunch with my father and sister and then I went to the doctor, who took some blood. He said that I had the blood sugar level of someone who had been fasting for at least four hours, but I had eaten half an hour beforehand. Everything is low with me.
Hypothyroidism is normally something that strikes older women, often in their 50s during menopause. Symptoms include unexplained weight gain, sluggishness, dry and brittle skin - and hair loss. I had none of these to any great extent, except for the hair loss. And I was tired all the time, but I blamed that on grad school and general stress. And even though I worked out every day, I hadn't lost weight in years, but I hadn't gained any either. My weight had been steady for a long time - a frustratingly long time, especially since I did want to lose weight. And my skin wasn't any more dry or brittle than anyone else's, or so I thought. And I'm 27!, I thought to myself. Why am I sick with a menopausal woman's disease?
But if it is indeed hypothyroidism, this explains a lot, and if I get this treated, it could potentially benefit me a lot, especially in this upcoming semester when I'll be preparing for comprehensive exams. I would love to be able to sleep less and still feel rested. I would love to go through the day without the stress of looking bald to anyone tall enough to see the top of my head (which is most people). These things would be a real load off my mind. Should they happen, I would welcome them.
I picked up the pills this morning. They're small and light purple in color and oblong in shape. I have to take them in the morning, on an empty stomach, at least half an hour to an hour before breakfast, and four hours from when I plan on taking an iron or calcium supplement. I can no longer take an iodine supplement because of the possibility of negative interactions, so I'll revert back to my old multivitamin. I'm going to keep using the salt though, just in case. I took the first one around 8:30 am.
So, about 12 hours after I took the first pill, I feel good. I didn't get the groggy sluggish I-need-a-nap feeling this afternoon, and that made me happy. But this was also just the first day, and I wonder how much of it is psychosomatic. I am easily swayed by the idea of taking medication - sugar pills work wonders for me - because I believe that as soon as I take something that a doctor prescribed to me, health and wellness are not too far away. I may be deceiving myself, but it's a good first day of deception. We'll see what happens from here. Hopefully the future is hirsute and bright.
So Wednesday at 2:30 pm finally came and I rode my bike the four blocks over to the clinic. It is a comically old building, so old that I was taken a bit aback at first. If the building looked like it was going to fall apart, what kind of medical treatment was I going to receive? But whatever, it was next to a hospital (the Speciality Hospital of Washington), and Dr. Thomas got good reviews online (like that means anything) and I was desperate to see a professional, so I went in.
I walked up rickety old steps to the second floor, passing signs that read things like "Do NOT sit on top of the heater - the cover is broken!" and "DON'T BLOCK THE STEPS" and walked down a Pepto Bismol pink hallway that had a few framed prints by Renoir and Monet. I looked at the one by Renoir, "Two Young Girls at a Piano," for a second before I walked into Dr. Thomas's office. It looked peaceful. I thought, this is what life was like before modernism, or at least postmodernism. When French men could paint scenes like this and become famous. How weird.
A woman behind the desk photocopied my driver's license and insurance ID and gave me a stack of papers, all of which looked like they were typed up by a typewriter in 1989 and photocopied endlessly since, for me to fill out in the waiting room. I sat down on an old chair and began to fill in my name, lucky that I brought my own pen since the receptionist was out, and looked around. I was with three other people: a large woman who listened to her iPod so loudly I could hear the dance/hip hop she was playing, and an older woman and her teenage son. The son had long dreads and looked horribly uncomfortable. His mother ate a bag of hot fries, those spicy little potato stick things, and looked unconcerned. On the TV was an afternoon news show with a vaguely attracted middle-aged man and woman bantering excitedly about nothing, all of which was the stupidest thing I had ever heard. There were a few magazines scattered around on low coffee tables shoved into the corners. No one read them. They either watched TV or listened to the iPod, or listened to the other woman's iPod, as I did. Which I didn't really enjoy.
The paperwork asked for my history, my insurance, the start date of my last period, why I was in there, etc etc etc. Other information requested included my family history of medical defects, which I abbreviated to include only the most serious. I noted the heart problems, cancer, and thyroid issues in the rest of my family, citing members who had already died of these diseases. And I wrote in on 'other' that my aunt has full-body alopecia. which is what I feared that I had when my hair started falling out rapidly and with a seeming vengeance a few months ago.
That was the real reason I was here, after all: the hair loss. Online sources say that female hair loss is more of a pride thing than anything else. It hurts our femininity, and that makes us sad. I was reticent to agree, laughing at these online generalization of womanhood, but agreed anyway, even though I wouldn't allow myself to believe that I did. Losing my hair - my fine, pathetic hair that doesn't grow and I don't know how to style and it always looks terrible - would hurt me very badly. Maybe it's a pride thing after all, and maybe I'm more of a traditional female than I thought. To participate in making sweeping generalizations about gender and sex, if I lost my hair, I would feel pretty terrible. It would be hard for me to leave the apartment. For a man, and particularly for an older man, it's part of life, part of genetics. For a woman it was embarrassing, like I had done something wrong. Had I? I thought about photos I had seen of myself from my trip to Colorado in July: I was armwrestling with a friend (it's a long story) and someone took a photo of me winning, of me taking her down, and my whole body is leaning towards the camera, the top of my head visible. And the hair is thinning to an embarrassingly noticeable degree. I was starting to go bald. Since most people are taller than me, I began to wonder why no one said anything. Maybe they were embarrassed about it too.
But, I joked to myself, I always looked good in wigs. And wigs you don't really need to style, the way you need to do hair every day. I could deal with it if my hair all fell out at once and I could just go to the wig store, pick one out, and go home. The next day, I'd look like a hair model. A plastic hair model.
Rather than just accept this fate, however, I tried to figure out what I could do on my own. It was my hair stylist, Molly, who said that my thyroid might be the issue. She was cutting my hair in late July and was concerned with how easily it wrested away from my skull, how much was missing up top. It wasn't anemia, because I had been taking iron pills for a year or more now. It wasn't that my hair was unhealthy because I dyed it too much, even though it was before - the prolonged contact with Sun-In hadn't done my hair any favors. But I had given up hair dye, gone cold turkey, and I hadn't hanged its color in over a year. The hair that remained was soft and healthy and shiny (and the mousy blondish-brown that I had dyed away for so many years). But it fell out all the time. Frightening numbers of strands would come out in the shower. Every time I ran my hand through my hair, anywhere between five and twenty strands would be entangled in my fingers. I hated it. I tried not to touch it, thinking that if I just left my hair alone, it would stop falling out. I brushed it once a day and that was it. I thought to myself, if you leave it alone, everything will be fine.
Well, what a load of crap. Leaving my hair alone didn't help anything. It was self-deception, my way of coping with something I was scared of, and I was scared. I was really scared of going bald.
Instead, when I decided to actually be proactive about some things, I made my appointment with Dr. Thomas and looked around online to see what I could do in the meantime. I noted that a lack of iodine in the diet has negative effects on the thyroid and could be the cause of some hair loss. I realized that my diet was about 100% iodine deficient. Our salt wasn't iodized. My multivitamin, that I took daily, had no iodine. And I rarely ate fish or seaweed because there is a shocking lack of sushi restaurants in Capitol Hill (why is this? We finally got a frozen yogurt place. Why no sushi?). So I bought iodized salt, added it in all the places I normally added salt, and started taking a multivitamin with 100% of my daily value of iodine. Within the week things started to improve: less hair came out when I washed it in the shower, fewer strands in the hairbrush, even fewer in my hands as I ran them, oh-so-tentatively at first, through my hair. Wow!, I thought to myself. This is fabulous! I have this whole thing taken care of!
Then I went to the doctor.
Sigh.
In Dr. Thomas's office, after I had filled out the paperwork I decided to go use the bathroom so I could take a few deep breaths by myself before I had to hear what devastating news the doctor might potentially have. I handed the clipboard to the receptionist and asked her where the bathroom was - down the hall, right next to the Renoir. At first I thought the door was a trick: no door knob, and I couldn't see any hinges. And it wouldn't open. It was stuck shut. I tried pushing it inwards, then pulling it to one side and the other thinking that the door was on rollers somehow. Nothing worked. I thought I had the wrong door, but the sign above it said "Restroom" and was definitely referring to the mystery door. Then, from inside the mystery door's room, I heard a toilet flush and someone wash turn on and off the sink. The door pulled inwards and out came the young guy with dreads. He had a little plastic cup of his urine in one hand, and was really embarrassed to see me standing there. We negotiated the tiny hallway and he went and sat down in a room to my left. I wondered what he had to pee in a cup for. It made me realize that other people's problems will always dwarf mine, and I suddenly became very embarrassed that I was at the doctor because I was feeling vain.
After I used the bathroom I sat back down in the waiting room. The iPod woman was called out. When I sneezed a few times, the older potato stick-eating woman said 'Bless you' and then turned back to the TV. I waited for about five more minutes when a Haitian woman took me into an examining room, took my blood pressure and pulse, and, as I turned my head so I wouldn't see, drained two vials of my blood. There was a photo of a sheltie on her wall, so while she was taking my blood we talked about dogs. Her sheltie was named Beethoven and she had a few prints by Van Gogh on her wall, around the picture of her dog. I thought, this is a very classically-oriented doctor's office. Wow.
The Haitian nurse asked me if I needed a pelvic exam, which I did not. I told her about the hair, and the tiredness, and she took me into a different examining room and told me I could wait there for the doctor. The room was made for pelvic exams, which always makes for an uncomfortable waiting period, staring at those stirrups. Dr. Thomas came in, checked my vitals again, had me breathe a few deep breaths, listened to my story about the hair loss and the tiredness and all the other things, felt my throat, and told me that she didn't see or feel or hear anything wrong. In fact, I was really healthy. She'd get the blood results back by Friday at the latest and call me if anything was wrong. I was supposed to keep taking the multivitamin with iodine. Things were probably okay.
So when she called me back less than 24 hours later, she at least noted that what I have is not severe. My hypothyroidism (underactive thyroid, the gland that controls metabolism) is mild or moderate. There are numbers involved - Dr. Thomas mentioned them on the phone - though I don't know what they corresponded too. A normal thyroid is between 1 and 4, preferably around 2 or 3. Mine is at 8. 8 what? I don't know. But 8 is bad. She got the results of my blood test back and wanted to get me on medication right away, a low dose of some hormone, and I was to stop taking the iodine immediately and get on these pills just as fast.
She also phoned the prescription into the CVS two blocks away for me, which was nice. She said that I had to take pills daily, a pill every day for eight weeks, and then come back and see her and "we'll see how we're doing." I like how doctors always use 'we' when talking about individual patient conditions. SHE doesn't have hypothyroidism (or does she?) so it's not OUR condition. But we'll still see how WE are doing in two months. It makes me feel like I'm part of a team.
I went back to the computer and looked up hypothyroidism. I thought it was funny that I have hyPOthyroidism, since I also have hypoglycemia. Everything is low with me. Once, when I was about 15, I went to the doctor because I was shaking all the time. I had eaten lunch with my father and sister and then I went to the doctor, who took some blood. He said that I had the blood sugar level of someone who had been fasting for at least four hours, but I had eaten half an hour beforehand. Everything is low with me.
Hypothyroidism is normally something that strikes older women, often in their 50s during menopause. Symptoms include unexplained weight gain, sluggishness, dry and brittle skin - and hair loss. I had none of these to any great extent, except for the hair loss. And I was tired all the time, but I blamed that on grad school and general stress. And even though I worked out every day, I hadn't lost weight in years, but I hadn't gained any either. My weight had been steady for a long time - a frustratingly long time, especially since I did want to lose weight. And my skin wasn't any more dry or brittle than anyone else's, or so I thought. And I'm 27!, I thought to myself. Why am I sick with a menopausal woman's disease?
But if it is indeed hypothyroidism, this explains a lot, and if I get this treated, it could potentially benefit me a lot, especially in this upcoming semester when I'll be preparing for comprehensive exams. I would love to be able to sleep less and still feel rested. I would love to go through the day without the stress of looking bald to anyone tall enough to see the top of my head (which is most people). These things would be a real load off my mind. Should they happen, I would welcome them.
I picked up the pills this morning. They're small and light purple in color and oblong in shape. I have to take them in the morning, on an empty stomach, at least half an hour to an hour before breakfast, and four hours from when I plan on taking an iron or calcium supplement. I can no longer take an iodine supplement because of the possibility of negative interactions, so I'll revert back to my old multivitamin. I'm going to keep using the salt though, just in case. I took the first one around 8:30 am.
So, about 12 hours after I took the first pill, I feel good. I didn't get the groggy sluggish I-need-a-nap feeling this afternoon, and that made me happy. But this was also just the first day, and I wonder how much of it is psychosomatic. I am easily swayed by the idea of taking medication - sugar pills work wonders for me - because I believe that as soon as I take something that a doctor prescribed to me, health and wellness are not too far away. I may be deceiving myself, but it's a good first day of deception. We'll see what happens from here. Hopefully the future is hirsute and bright.
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