When I was about eight years old, I was diagnosed with a thyroid disorder called Hypothyroidism. Up to that point, I’d always been as thin as a rail, and constantly sick. When I hit seven years old, I started to gain weight rapidly which prompted my family to take me to the doctor.
I remember the day I got diagnosed; my doctor didn’t want to scare me with the big terms and medical words, so he sent me outside to stand in the hall while he talked to my family. As an eight-year-old who had spent most of her life being in and out of hospitals and doctors offices, I was convinced that I was dying.
That wasn’t the case, of course. The condition was explained to me, I was put on some medicine and little me thought that was all there was to it.
However, I was wrong. You see, your thyroid controls your hormones. If you don’t have any hormones, then a lot of your body’s systems don’t work right. Some people have the opposite of this condition called Hyperthyroidism, where their body makes too much hormones and sends everything into overdrive.
Thyroid disorders don’t typically sound like something too terrifying. You tend to think that as long as you take your medicine on schedule and eat right and exercise that you’ll be okay.
The thing is, there’s a terrifying side to these kinds of disorders.
Hypothyroidism has the ability to turn into something called Addison’s Disease if it’s not treated. Addison’s Disease is a disorder of the Adrenal Glands, or more commonly known, the kidneys. If not treated, it can be fatal.
Things were fine for a while until I hit Junior High. I gained weight over the course of my junior high years and with that came a lot of struggles. A lot of factors went into what happened, such as things like my anxiety and depression from the low hormones getting out of control, mixed with the fears of being at an age where everything actually starts to matter, as well as being shifted around between doctors.
High school is hard enough for your typical healthy kid, but when you throw in a disorder that causes them to be different, it’s amplified. The social norm is to be a thin, athletic popular kid who’s on top of it; someone who has their life together and is fun to be around.
When you have a thyroid disorder like I do, everything is harder. You may not be that thin, athletic kid that people expect.
For me, I was fat in high school. I’ll admit that up front. I weigh less now than I did then, but looking back on it, I wish I would’ve done something sooner. I wish I would’ve pushed the doctors to figure it out and get me on track.
I get hurt easily, which is something that hasn’t changed, so it makes it hard to play sports. My tachycardia, another complication of the disorder, makes it hard to run or exercise as my heart goes almost double the rate it should and I end up having trouble breathing.
On top of the merciless bullying about my weight came a lot of health complications from the disorder. When nothing in your body works the way it’s supposed to, things tend to make you sick a lot easier. I had quite a few bouts of strep throat in high school. I got the flu, pneumonia and bronchitis a lot more frequently than anyone ever should.
My junior year of high school, I missed an entire month due to an ovarian cyst that was related to complications from the thyroid disorder.
Another problem that can come from a thyroid disorder is anemia. Anemia is when you don’t have enough healthy red blood cells to carry adequate oxygen to the body’s tissues.
Because of the lack of hormones in the body, you can’t adequately absorb B12 or Iron like you’re supposed to. This can make you feel tired and week.
Over the course of the next few years, as I progressed through puberty, I acquired a bleeding disorder that caused me to bleed for three months straight at a time. I would become severely anemic and had to take iron supplements and increase my intake of iron in my diet. I was eventually put on a birth control shot to stop the bleeding for good and now I’m only slightly anemic.
Having a thyroid disorder and treating it isn’t as simple as taking a pill every day and that’s it. It’s a delicate balance. Too much hormone and suddenly everything in your body is working overtime and you’re at a risk for strokes and heart attacks and lots of other horrible things.
Too little, and you’re suddenly overweight, complaining that you think your voice isn’t ‘girly’ enough, stuck at a height that you hate because your bones won’t grow, and everything you eat essentially just sits there until your metabolism decides to work. Oh, and you could have a stroke or a heart attack from the excess body fat. Can’t escape those, can we?
My disorder is specifically known as Hashimoto’s Disease, which is a fancy way of saying that my immune system is attacking my thyroid. It’s the most common type of thyroid disorder, yet no one really knows what causes it. A lot of doctors tend to think that a genetic flaw causes it, and that’s pretty much what my doctor told me.
It took me 14 years to get a name for my disorder. Sure, I knew I had Hypothyroidism, and I’d known that since I was eight, but I’d never known the specific name for my type of thyroid disorder. Getting that final, sure thing diagnosis explained a lot about the way I was and why I had so many different problems related to my thyroid.
Everything finally made sense and I didn’t feel like it was hopeless. The pills had never worked for me; they’d never kept my levels where they needed to be.
Now, I have a doctor who keeps a constant check on my levels. It’s a lot of bloodwork every few months and a lot of working on my diet and exercise, but I’m trying to get my life back on track.
When you have a disease that’s virtually invisible to the untrained eye, it can be hard to keep people from assuming one thing or another.
There’s no magic sign that I can hang above my head that says “I’m not fat and lazy, it’s my thyroid. I’m trying.”
Jeri Hensley
Graphic Designer