My friend Thyroid!

For like 2 months or so I have realized that something is not working well with me, but it was just a feeling that manifested after I found myself very lazy for 2 or 4 days in a roll…
Well, yesterday everything became crystal clear…it’s unbelievable how I don’t pay attention to myself, to my wishes, to my feelings, to my reactions.

Since I was 12 years old, I know that I have a dysfunction thyroid gland. The thyroid gland is a soft, butterfly shaped gland that lies wrapped around the windpipe below the Adam's apple. Its job is to secrete thyroid hormones that help regulate metabolism – in other words, the many chemical processes that keep our bodies ticking over.
So, because of that I take a pill of T4, thyroxine, every single day as soon as I open my eyes since 12, and I need to take it all my life long.

About 4 years ago I found out that I don’t have a dysfunction thyroid, because I don’t have a thyroid itself. I was born without it, and I don’t have its anti-body either.
So, as my doctors (all of them hold a PhD, so they are real doctors and those 4 girls are all Brazilians) like to say, I’m an aberration of nature!

Well, even though it is a rare “disease”, it is kind of easy to take care of it. Nothing more than taking the hormone’s pill every morning and periodically take blood exams to check the level of T4. The problem is that as I don’t have the thyroid gland, my body doesn’t produce any drop of thyroxine. So, as my body doesn’t produce it, how can I check it by blood exams! That’s the trick that from time to time knocks me out as right now!

So, when my non-existing thyroid gets decompensate my life becomes a nightmare. Small diary tasks get huge proportion! It drives me crazy not because the hormones and so on, but for the reason that I didn’t pay attention on those many signs that I was warning of, such as:

*fatigue
* swollen fingers and articulation
*weight gain,
* low motivation and ambition
* heat and/or cold intolerance
* headaches and migraines
* dry skin and hair
* irritability
* anxiety
* hair loss
* fluid retention
* depression
* short term memory problems
* decreased memory and concentration
* unhealthy and brittle nails
* constipation
* insomnia
* hives and acne
* slow healing
* lethargy and decreased energy
*muscle cramps, pain and stiffness
* and so on….

How can I have all those symptoms together and I don’t pay attention to them??

I have great doctors as I have said and they monitoring me from Brasil every week when I’m “in normal way” and every day when I’m having a little crisis as now.
So, one of my doctors asked me to take another blood test and I went this morning to a “private clinic” to take it. Please have in mind that I live in Switzerland because until now, I, myself, I don’t believe what my eyes just saw this morning.

So, I went to the clinic around 7:30 AM! After 10 minutes or so, my name was called and I was taken to a room that I thought it was an office with a microwave inside. I use to take blood test since I was 12 and I do it regularly. I’m very familiar with all the procedures of it.
Anyway, a girl wearing a dirty black t-shirt and a pair of jeans with no lab coat on, asked me to sit near a rectangular desk. I looked around with a mix of fear, rejection, disgusting in my eyes. I couldn’t believe that that room/office with a microwave was in fact the room where my blood would be taken out.

So, this girl that was a secretary and not a nurse, opened a drawer and she took a used pair of gloves from there and this was the glove she used to needle me. She also took from a top of a low cabinet a needle and a syringe.

Usually I do fear needles and those stuff, but this morning I was in complete panic!! For about 30 years I go often to clinics and laboratories to do the same blood tests and always a nurse, an official nurse with diploma and everything attended me. Always!!
The laboratory where I take all my 48 blood test every single time I’m in Uberlandia, Brasil, my hometown, is a super top thing that attends in a private, public and insurance way. Everybody is beyond nice, very very professional and all of them wear a uniform and a lab coat.
When it’s over, they send you to its cafeteria and they serve you coffee, tea, cakes and bread gratuity! You have the options to get your results by internet, delivery to your home or to your doctor free of charge!
All this over there, in a third world country!!!

I asked you to have in mind that all this amateur, crap, non-hygienic attending I had today was in Switzerland!

I can’t believe that I stretched my arm in a desk to someone who was wearing a used gloves and no lab coat, to take my blood out! It stressed me all day long!

Leaving with an illness that has no cure is a very stressful thing, but I really don’t care to all that. I mean, most of the time, I’m pretty ok! I have learned how to live together with it and we get along very well. Of course there are some hard days that I feel so tired, that I do feel like I’m dying.

So, when it happens, I take a time to lie down, grab a book until I get better and that’s it! I never gave to my friend thyroid the importance it may deserves. I take a very good care of it, but i never thought that it is bigger than I'm. I have this anomaly? Yes, I have! So what? I had to accept it and at the end it just helped me to be who I'm as everything around me...