Appointment with the Doctor

I finally had my doctor's appointment in San Francisco yesterday.  It was such a relief to address the problems that I've been having, as they become more aggravated by the day.

Luckily, it seemed to him that my issues are pretty straight forward.  My previous doctor forwarded all of my past blood work and he was able to review that along with my history.  He ordered a pretty insane amount of new blood work, and I won't have the results until December 7th.  That said, it's his suspicion that I need an adjustment on my thyroid medication.  Also, a hormone test that I took back in 2007 indicated that I had some adrenal exhaustion that was never addressed.  It's very common to experience this with Hashimotos, I guess.  He did a simple test for it in his office that was pretty interesting.  He took my blood pressure sitting down.  And he took my blood pressure standing up.  A normal person's blood pressure will rise slightly when they stand.  Someone with an adrenal issue's blood pressure will dip slightly when they stand.  Mine went down 12 points!!!  This was enough of a dip to warrant a hardy reaction from him.  I don't why, but there's something really satisfying about seeing a doctor look a little bit thrown off by a test that they've given you.  On the other hand, the fact that my blood pressure went down is pretty bad, so I'm trying not to feel too satisfied by it.  My physical examination showed signs of anemia.  I didn't quite understand the problem, but it was something about my eyes.

We discussed my diet a bit and as suspected he believes that it's really important for me to be gluten free.  No more cheating.  No more fresh baked bread or grilled cheese sandwiches.  He didn't seem to think that I needed to go vegan.  Lean proteins are great and I should eat them.

One thing that he did mention was making some lifestyle changes in order to reduce my stress.  It's likely my stress level that has depleted my adrenal glands.  When he asked me what I do I told him I'm a stay at home mom, which has been my standard answer for the past 8 1/2 years.  My girls are in school all day, so most people think that I am a professional soap opera watcher.  He asked me to take him through a day in my life... so I did.  He said, "You said that you didn't have a job!  You have 3 jobs!!!!" And I suppose that's true.  I am stretched too thin all the time, to the point that at night I have no patience for my children and no love for my husband.  This is not a healthy way to live my life.   This week has been particularly bad.  I deal with stress by going to the gym.  I only go to the gym on days when the kids are in school.  If they aren't in school and I want to go, Jay has to be home.  He's usually asleep when he's home, so I'll get up at 5 or 6 in the morning and go for a 60 minute session or something easy like that.  When we were in Denver, I was able to go to the gym at the hotel the first day but I wasn't able to go the second day (I had been out until nearly 4 AM, and up by 7).  The following day Jay went back to work and he wasn't awake for me to go.  On Monday the kids didn't have school.  On Tuesday I went back to the gym.  On Wednesday I went, I had to be at the school to make pies with the third graders and was only able to stay for 1/2 an hour.  On Thursday I went but I got really stressed  by all the things that had to happen that day and about the state I had left my house in that morning (I hadn't even made the beds).  Jay was away on Buddy weekend and texted me about when they wanted to come back to the house.  And I just got really overwhelmed by what a mess it was, how I hadn't done my grocery shopping or even folded the mountains of clean laundry in my bedroom... and I had to leave the gym and deal with some of my real life stuff.  I got in 40 minutes on the elliptical and that was all.  Then,  yesterday I had to skip it because we left for San Francisco at 7 AM and when we got back to Concord, Jay had Buddy weekend and the girls were about to get out of school.  I had no real way of dealing with my stress.  I guess the worst thing to do is to become so stressed out and stretched thin that you can't make time for yourself in any respect.  Between my work for the school and the work I'm doing for my father and the general duties of a mom, I have these moments where I feel I'm going to snap.  I get totally overwhelmed and have trouble putting it all in order.  I also helped to organize a parent driven program at the school called Motor Perception and because I completely forgot about it this week, no volunteers showed up and it had to be canceled.  This was very embarrassing and upsetting.  I think that I need to buy one of those old school calendars to carry with me.  I really hate the idea of keeping a calendar electronically and I need a way to keep track of everything that I have going on.  It's too much to remember, particularly with the kids getting older, having their own lives and hobbies and activities and friends and play dates and parties and needing to keep track of all of their stuff as well.

I am going to start knitting again.  In order to take my stress down a notch I like to drink wine at night.  It really helps me.  I feel my whole body just melt into a state of relaxation when I have a glass of wine.  But alcohol  depletes that adrenals and I need to heal mine.  I feel like knitting would help a lot with this.

Hashimotos Disease Really Sucks

For years I have had my hashimotos disease under control.

I was diagnosed with hashimotos the first year that we moved to Philadelphia.  It was a seriously tough year for me.  I was pretty overwhelmed by the city and petrified of driving in it (and we lived in center city).  The girls were still tiny and in order to go anywhere I needed to put them in the stroller and walk.  But I had become depressed and exhausted. My weight shot up and even walking  6 blocks to the park with the girls was completely exhausting.  I didn't have any friends to help pick my spirits up and that paired with fatigue and a tendency to eat emotionally caused terrible weight gain.

At some point I began working really hard to lose weight.  We got a treadmill and I started to make some big changes in my diet.  It was around this time that I went vegan for the first time.   After a few months of working very hard I decided to weigh myself.  I was shocked and horrified when I got on the scale and it said that I weighed 242 pounds.  I was at my mother's house (I didn't own my own scale at that time) and I fell apart.  My mom urged me to contact my doctor.  I had been using a natural doctor who had diagnosed me with mild hypothyroidism and had treated me with thyroid boosting supplements, rather than medication.  At that point we believed that we could turn my thyroid function around by giving it a little help, but it didn't work.

When I went into my doctor's office I put my head and in my hands and exploded into a giant, fat, depressed storm of tears.  I felt hopeless.  I felt 100% out of control of my body.  I felt scared and resigned to the fact that I could not change and my healthy efforts were in vain.  My doctor was certain that it was my thyroid and tests confirmed that I had developed an autoimmune disorder called Hashimotos Disease.

I began a fairly high dosage of medication.  And though I should be using a vegan, gluten free diet, I have never been able to entirely commit to it.

For the past 4 years my medication has helped me.  As soon as I began taking it my energy level returned to  normal, I stopped feeling depressed and within a year I was back down to a normal weight.     And the only time I remember how terrible I felt before I was diagnosed with Hashimotos is when I forget to take it for a series of days.

But lately, something isn't working for me.  I have started experiencing new symptoms of hashimotos that I didn't previously have.  First, my periods, which have always been relatively light, started coming very heavily.  And the breast tenderness that people all get right before their period was as bad as it was during pregnancy and lasts THE WHOLE MONTH!!!!!  And now, I am losing wild amounts of hair.  I can't even touch my hair without strands of it falling out.  I am losing handfuls of it every day.  I am also feeling fatigued.

At first I thought that I was having a hormone imbalance, but my good friend Amber also suffers from hashimotos and is quite a bit more knowledgeable than I am (I stopped learning about it when my medication worked for me), told me that my symptoms are all associated with hashimotos.  I haven't had my blood work checked since we moved to California and my old doctor has continued to refill my prescription  So, it's time for me to see someone new.  I am going to make an appointment with a  specialist in San Francisco this week.  Hopefully they can help me get to the bottom of this problem.

Also, I am going to make the switch to a vegan, gluten free diet.  I drag my heals on this.  Though I do love lots of vegan food and even like to cook it.  I don't want to eat it all of the time.  And I especially don't want to be gluten free.  I know that I have to and that the foods that I eat are likely causing inflammation that is exasperating my hashimotos disease.  I don't know why I can't seem to get my head in the game for this change.  I just have to do it.

And that's what is happening with me these days.  In other news, my workouts get harder and harder.  I'm still at the gym 6 days a week.  Each day I work out anywhere from 60 minutes (always straight cardio on these short days) to 2 1/2 hours.  One day I was even there for 3 hours (but I don't think that I'll ever do that again. lol).  I have also been working for my dad, proofreading and editing the documents for his consulting business.  Between my time at the gym, my room parent duties and my new job, I haven't had much time to blog.  I'm going to make a big effort to make it happen more though.

I hope that everyone is well!