Tag Archives: thyroid

Life Around Here: December Edition

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Life around here has been off kilter for the last couple of months. It has been busier than I like and more stressful in some ways. Adventure season was shorter than normal this year as I opted to spend more time hiking and less time out running around. That has its pros and cons but the lack of going out and doing and seeing new stuff on Saturdays this fall has given life a different tone. 

I completed 75 miles as part of a Fall Hike Challenge over the course of two months. Those miles zig zagged through state parks, state forests and even a couple of nature preserves and mostly onto new trails rather than repeating the same ones as I’m prone to do. That’s a great thing. 

My annual Christmas weekend with a friend was a bust this year because she got sick at the last minute. I felt bad for her because she was sick and missed out on the fun. While I made the best of the circumstances and went anyway, it would have been more fun with my pal. I haven’t told any of the stories from that weekend here and need to do that soon. It was just a couple of days. While I stayed in Ohio’s Amish Country, I didn’t do much that people traditionally enjoy in Amish Country. Instead, I mostly opted for museums and shopping in surrounding counties. I’m not a fan of that area and have no reason to go back except that I did stay at a lovely bed and breakfast and enjoyed driving some back roads to see beautiful farmland. 

The headline lately is that pure and utter exhaustion has set in again along with a number of other issues I now recognize as symptoms of my hypothyroidism. So, it’s back to the doctor this  week to talk again about how I can’t live this way. Thyroid pain and fatigue are real so don’t doubt the people in your life who complain about their issues. Waking up in the morning is the hardest thing I do all day unless you count staying awake in the afternoon when my mind and body begin to beg for a nap. Diet does help along with rest, exercise, fluids, LOTS of Vitamin C and a little pill that contributes precious little but is part of the team. 

As the holidays approach, so has the cookie baking, rich meals and the comfort foods that make cold weather more pleasant. I’m weighing my options for how I want to retool my diet to better support my thyroid but am putting it off until after all that fun cookie baking is over.  I have been down this path before and know exactly what I need to eat but, man, it is hard to keep up with that kind of rigidity seven days a week. When I’m eating for thyroid health, there’s no processed food, no sugar or sweeteners of any kind, no dairy, no grains and very small amounts of gluten. I prepare every morsel of food I eat and only drink water. Whipping out a frozen dinner because you’re tired after a hard workday is not an option. You use the ingredients you have on hand to whip up a protein, vegetable and healthy fat or just go hungry. 

As hard as it is to prepare from scratch every bit of food I eat, it’s much easier when my head is in the game.

My head is not currently in the game. But I’ll get there. 

Meanwhile, the house is decorated and Christmas cards have been mailed. The days are getting shorter but the impending solstice means that we will soon start to gain daylight. I’m engaging in a Winter Hike Challenge. Our goal is fifty miles and we’ve already completed twelve. I hope to surpass this goal but we’ll see what winter brings. 

There is a light at the end of the tunnel. I always hoard vacation time for year end and have a reasonably long break upcoming. It can’t come a moment too soon and I’’m looking forward to some time to rest, spend at home and maybe even go out on an adventure or two. Once we finish up Christmas, I’ll be shifting gears into the next season – my Winter No Spend Challenge when I commit to staying home and using what I already own rather than being on the go so much. This is when I reset my habits for the year opting for rest over running around, for getting creative with ingredients from the back of the pantry instead of shopping and spending more time doing quiet things I truly enjoy – hiking, reading, puzzles, movies and puttering around the house. 

This is when I’ll buckle down on nutrition and try to get back into some kind of daily exercise habits that support my angry thyroid. 

I have big plans but these habits I want to build are manageable because self care and wellness can be the focus of my time. Not to mention, many go together. I’m a fan of habit stacking. When you commit to staying home and resting, it’s easier to find time to cook, to sleep, to write, to exercise and to engage in the self care habits you believe are important. When you eat whole foods, your body naturally craves more water and naturally has more energy to propel you into a mindset of wanting to exercise. 

See where I’m going with this? You can apply this mindset to your own life as well by studying your own habits and desires to create goals that support each other. 

So, this is where I am right now. I’m tired and stretched thin. I have ideas for how I want to be but still have a mountain of work on the job and at home to trudge through before I can get there. That’s ok. It just means I’m needed and it means I’ll appreciate better days when they arrive.

For this I am grateful. 

Tell me, what’s happening in your world? Are you stretched thin? Feeling great? Wishing for more time? Tell me all about it!

Thyroid Update

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Back in April, I shared with you that I had been diagnosed with hypothyroidism and gave an overview of what that has meant to me. You can read that confession here. Two months later and I am sick of thinking about it but understand that an update could help someone else.

I made this picture on a hike in the Hocking Hills last year. This picture of emerging from the darkness and climbing worn, uneven stairs toward the light is the perfect imagery to illustrate where I am right now.

It is notoriously difficult to adjust thyroid medicine. My circumstances are improving but it has been a slow climb. My energy is improving but I can still sleep ten hours and wake up feeling like I didn’t sleep at all.

Hair loss, joint pain, and sudden raspiness of voice persist. Fatigue in the afternoon is a pain and brain fog is still sometimes an issue. Finding the rights words is hard work some days. I had been combatting this with a bit of Diet Coke in the afternoon but have discovered that pop and sugar make things worse.

Reducing gluten has been a game changer and eating a banana most days has helped too. My medical provider advised me to listen to my body but to push myself to do more. So I’m trying to get back into hiking or at least walking the local bike path as much as possible. I have been trying to get to sleep early in hopes that someday I will awake rested.

Thankfully, many of my symptoms like weight gain and occasional dizziness seem to have leveled off and that is encouraging.

So I take my medicine religiously and try to walk that tight rope between rest and pushing.

I’m far behind in chores and work around the house because all my energy seems to be used up by my job and by trying to have some quality of life through an occasional adventure day.

I have a big trip on the books later this summer so I’m trying to do some training on the hiking trails. I will need more energy and more muscle power if I intend to enjoy that trip.

So things are improving even if it does feel like a slow climb out of the dark. If you have a thyroid problem, give yourself some grace. Personally, it feels like my body hates me and I hate my body. It’s a toxic relationship but I still choose to believe there is hope.

A New Day

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The last few months have been challenging for me personally. The first quarter is always my hardest because of a project at work but this quarter has been marked by a number of other difficulties.

In my personal life, I have been battling a issue with my health. The symptoms didn’t just start this year but it was only recently diagnosed as hypothyroidism. This isn’t life threatening but is life altering and it explains a lot of seemingly isolated problems that have been going on for a long time.

Everyone complains about weight gain and exhaustion. These are certainly the headlines when it comes to my complaints but there’s a lot more to it. My muscles and joints hurt, my voice gets raspy and my skin itches for no reason at all. Nighttime is often defined by violent cold chills while morning is defined by grogginess and the sensation I spent my night running a marathon.

I tell you all this, not for your sympathy, but because I wish more people would talk about this stuff. Had I known more about the symptoms I might have been a better advocate for myself. Maybe you or someone you know is struggling and you don’t know why. This problem often comes with a litany of other things I haven’t mentioned here. Sometimes my hands and arms go numb for no reason. It’s ridiculous, the weird stuff that has been going on.

The cause can be genetic but it can also involve nutritional deficiencies like Vitamin D, Iron and Magnesium. We caught mine because my cholesterol was creeping up there and your thyroid controls cholesterol. Who knew?

I’m now on the path to finding the right dosage of a little white pill I take every day. This can be a real chore and it can be ever changing.

The more meaningful journey for me is using food as medicine. In the interest of boosting my magnesium, I now eat banana a day whether I want it or not. I never want the banana but see value in it as those bad muscle aches and pains are starting to subside. I’m reducing gluten at home. While this isn’t a fix for everyone, it does seem to be helping with my brain fog.

I have a list of things to try adding or removing from my diet. As I feel better, I can be more active. It would be nice to take off the extra pounds and to feel healthy and strong again but I have read and heard horror stories about the thyroid and why it’s often a lifelong battle.

I put that big work project to bed yesterday. It’s in the hands of my printer now and some other things at work should improve soon as well. I am hopeful that life will get easier. You can have stress at home or stress at work but it’s crippling to experience stress everywhere you go.

I celebrated in my own way yesterday. At lunch, I treated myself to some really nice books at an Ollie’s. This included one about the artist Monet and will help me prepare for an upcoming adventure. Near the cash register, a display of bare root roses presented one called “New Day.” It is yellow and happy and you can bet it will soon grace the flower bed outside my home office window.

It is a new day.

After work, I strolled the bike path, logging two miles and stopping once to admire a nice patch of wildflowers. There’s one area where you’ll find several varieties. While there are a couple that are large and obvious, they’re mostly small and delicate. You have to look for them, and the more you see, the more you see. It’s a quiet reminder that great gifts often come in small packages and that you sometimes have to slow down and go looking to find the beauty.

It’s there. You just have to try to find it.

This blog is written as an exercise in daily creativity. That means, instead of keeping a queue of future posts ready to go, I usually have just a list of ideas and start fresh every day. The exception is when I’m planning vacation or know that there will be no time for writing one day.

That has worked great until recently as exhaustion has started to win. That’s why I took a break.

I woke up this morning still tired but not as tired as a week ago and certainly far better than a month ago. I trust that I’m headed in the right direction and that I can get back to storytelling here. This is something that I enjoy immensely. The writing is close to my heart but I also enjoy hearing from all of you virtually and in real life.

If you’re interested in an overview of hypothyroidism, the Mayo Clinic provides a basic overview here. Talk to your doctor if some of the symptoms sound familiar. Advocate for yourself.

Happy Saturday, friends. It’s a new day.