#Hypothyroidism

[reality-detective]

Hypothyroid 🤔

[wolfchanw]

Assorted updates!! Dragonfruit is a……..girl!! I sent a very private photo to @talesfromtreatment who let me know that what I was seeing was in fact a very swollen vulva. I separated her from her sisters to see if perhaps there was some covert suckling going on and the swelling went down rapidly. Naughty, whoever was doing that suckling!

Cantaloupe is growing! She’s now 170g to her sisters’ 230. I still think she may have hypothyroidism, but the current plan is to wait for her four week checkup and draw blood then if she’s still tiny and weird looking. She also sleeps a LOT more than her sisters.

Banana is plomp. Round. Loud AF. And perfect.

I have included two pictures of Cantaloupe’s skin after we got her diarrhea managed. Despite my best efforts to keep her clean, she wound up with some fecal scald on her back legs and tail. Pictured is her back foot before and after two applications of A&D ointment. I’m freaking impressed. Next time I have a diarrhea kitten I’m using the A&D pre-emptively to protect the skin BEFORE it gets all scaly.

[beetusbritt]

[synbiosys]

So, I’m not proud of it, but I’m back to ask for help again. Above is the link to my Ko-Fi account; I can accept donations via Stripe and Paypal; I don’t have a preference of which method you use. Below is a more detailed explanation of the events that have led to my current predicament; it’s not entirely necessary to understand, but it should make sense of why this happened to me.

I’m dealing with some health problems and a recent car accident and I need help paying my bills for the next few months while I use that time to finish incomplete coursework for classes I took last year. In case it’s not clear, an “Incomplete” is a grade that can be given by instructors at some schools in situations where a student wasn’t able to complete a major assignment for a class due to circumstances outside their control, and allows students a pre-determined amount of time to finish that work beyond the end of the course. I had a plan for covering my expenses with a summer job at the Oregon State University Arthropod Collection (OSAC) while I finished the incomplete work, but the nature of my health issues, an outbreak of fleas, and a car accident have all prevented me from making it work. Now I’m kind of trapped; the cost of living in Corvallis is too high for food stamps to last an entire month, I don’t have a car anymore, and I’ll probably end up homeless if I can’t pay October rent and also pay November rent on time. I’ve managed to find some work doing landscaping and yardwork in my neighborhood, but I’ve realized that it’s impossible to make enough money and also handle the incomplete coursework; focusing on the former will impact the completion of my degree in June, while focusing on the latter will likely result in homelessness. The loss of my car is exacerbating all of this, in part because I live further away from all of the stores/banks/etc. in Corvallis, and public transit here is not very good.

Since late 2022, I’ve been experiencing sleep apnea-like health problems arising from swollen turbinate glands. I have some known allergies, but they’ve never caused swollen turbinate glands. The impact on my sleep quality became so severe that I had to resort to nasal strips every night. I saw doctors about this problem as early as spring of 2022, but none of them were helpful; most of them didn’t listen to me, and none of them considered trying any kind of testing. This ineptitude continued even after directly asking my primary doctor about autoimmune conditions and how we could test for them. Despite how obviously informative blood samples can be, nobody suggested a blood test. I finally lost my patience and demanded they give me a blood test for hypothyroidism at the end of August. Lo and behold, my thyroid hormone levels were an order of magnitude out of the normal range. Autoimmune problems run in my mother’s family, and it’s likely that I have Hashimoto’s thyroiditis; this disease is rarer in men, and the symptoms appear very gradually. While I can understand how this would delay detection of the disease, there were FIVE different doctors who saw me in relation to the sleep/allergy problems and none of them considered a blood test. I started taking levothyroxine the same day as the test results, but before being treated, my symptoms became so severe that my ADHD medication stopped working, my OCD symptoms went out of control, and I was experiencing severe brain fog. This is what forced me to request incomplete grades for my courses; I was trying to complete coursework despite all of this, and I was barely able to keep up. Once treatment begins, it takes at least a month to take effect, so my symptoms didn’t start improving until early October. Most recently, I found out that I needed to increase my dosage, but thyroid problems often have complex consequences, and any changes to the dose of the medication will result in unwanted side effects.

My original plan for this summer was to work at OSAC to cover my expenses while I tackled the incomplete coursework. I calculated the gross income I’d need to meet my expenses, and working 30 hours a week at this position well exceeded that amount. My duties as a curatorial assistant change slightly depending on the tasks at hand, but because I am paid from grant money, I must work efficiently, accurately, and in an organized manner. Because I have ADHD, extra measures are necessary in order to meet these requirements. I’ve worked this job intermittently since 2018, so I know how prevent my ADHD symptoms from interfering with my work. Because of the failures by my doctors to address my health problems, I was already struggling to arrive at work on time by June. By July, my symptoms had worsened to the point that I was no longer able to focus on work consistently, voluntarily cutting some days short because I wasn’t accomplishing much, and continuing to work in that state was inherently a waste of grant money. By August I could only make it to work sporadically. As a result, I missed most of the income I could have earned for August and September of this year. I was able to make up for some of this impact by selling old trading cards and video games from childhood, but that money didn’t last very long.

I was also confronted with a flea infestation that suddenly appeared in August. I rent a bedroom in a house with housemates; we tried to eradicate them ourselves, but the landlord suddenly informed us in early September that he hired an exterminator, who was arriving in less than 24 hours. I have some pet reptiles and pet invertebrates I needed to protect from pesticide exposure, so I suddenly had to move my pets to a friend’s house. I also had to re-arrange my bedroom to accommodate the exterminators. Based on the chemicals that were used, the only way I could make room safe again for my pets was by mopping the floor in my bedroom and the adjacent hallway three times. This ultimately cost me four days, and then the exterminators came back in early October, which forced me to repeat the process.

As if this wasn’t enough, I had a serious car accident in late September that annihilated my car and left me with severe lacerations to my left arm and a fracture in my thumb. The car spun out and flipped in the process, landing in the opposite lane. If another car had been about to pass me, it would have caused a direct collision at around 55 mph, and I probably wouldn’t have survived that. I realized the danger immediately and crawled out of the car, but most of the other possible outcomes would have involved my demise. I’m very lucky, but it took almost a month for the lacerations to heal, and one of them was deep enough to cause nerve damage, which hasn’t completely healed yet. My left hand has healed enough for me to use it, but I’m still having some issues with my thumb.

I wish I could say that I had help from my family, but my parents were impacted by both of the recent hurricanes that made landfall in western Florida. Even before the hurricanes, my parents weren’t really willing to understand what I was dealing with. I grew up in an abusive household; my sister and I were neglected by our parents, and we experienced emotional abuse from them as young adults. This is particularly true of my father, who himself is the product of a highly abusive upbringing. Unfortunately, research on the dynamics of child abuse has shown that children from abusive households often suffer a lack of economic mobility relative to children from more supportive family backgrounds as a result of mental health impacts. This has absolutely been the case with my sister and I; both of us are well into our 30s, and neither of us is anywhere close to long-term financial stability. That’s why it was deeply hurtful to hear my father blame me for being unable to fly to Florida on a whim to help him clean up the house, blame me for paying $950 a month for rent, and shame me for being 35 years old without a “stable job”. Both of my parents visited me in Corvallis in late July; they could tell that I was struggling, they apologized for neglecting me, and they told me they’d be more supportive, but apparently everything they said to me then must have been an act.  

Hopefully, this explanation sufficiently articulates the situation I’ve ended up in. I almost have enough money to pay my October rent, and I need to have my November rent paid by 11/5. I would have tried using Ko-Fi sooner, but in the interest of upholding my own responsibility, I wanted to exhaust my other options before resorting to donations again

[trashland-llamas]

Warm Summer's Day

x gn reader

Ace’s frown deepens with concern when he sees Reader asleep in the midst of summer with a winter duvet covering them. Thinking he had made their shared bedroom too cold but in reality, it’s just a result of their hypothyroidism. Half the time they’ll go about their day unaware of how cold their hands or feet are until they make contact with Ace’s warm skin. Cold intolerance Chopper had dubbed it. Removing the duvet, he crawls in behind them. ‘Hmm?’

‘S’just me, turtle dove. Go back to sleep, I’ll keep you warm.’ Ace whispers, maneuvering them to lay on top of him. Not minding one bit if they treat him like one of those teddy bears you can heat up in the microwave. Carting his finger through their hair as they listen to his heartbeat that still speeds up whenever he's near them. 'Don't sweat it, I'll be here when you wake up.' The pun more for him in attempts to not let his worries show. The days where they'd wake up because their body temperature would suddenly plummet in the night, tried to make its way to the forefront of his mind. That or they'd suddenly have to remove themselves from his hold as their body decided it wanted to work properly for an hour or so. Once asleep, his hands drifted downwards to their back. Going underneath their shirt to feel skin against skin.

But right now, he promised to watch over and protect them as the ship lulled them further into a deeper slumber. Swiftly following them once his thoughts silenced. 'Sleep well, darling. Sleep soundly,' kissing the crown of their head.

[charlies-a-ghost]

what do I say when it will never get better

[crippledcryptidd]

Jellyfish cane

ID: the middle of a black cane with a white jellyfish plush wrapped around it. The cane is a on a brown wooden deck. End ID

[moondereluna]

I have learned heating pads and hot water bottles r a staple of the chronic illness community

And honestly that makes sm sense

Whenever I’m tired or in agonising pain the main thing to soothe it as quickly as possible and lull me to sleep

Is in fact, a hot water bottle or hand warmers

[spoonie-journey]

I don’t want anything to be wrong with me, but we’re past that, so I just want to know what is wrong with me

[rhiandoesfandom]

I am trying to stay calm and collected but if my work doesn't let me come back to work soon then I'll have to start applying for federal disability.

We can't sustain like this forever.

Anyway, if you wanna help me out during this disabling double hell, my venmo is @Rhian-Beam

[chronicreativity]

in year two of my undergrad, i took a poetry module taught by eoghan walls and paul farley. i wrote a ten poem anthology about my chronic illness titled Chronic Creativity (which you may recognise as this blog's namesake!) and Thyroid UK very kindly published one of my poems in this issue of their magazine

[cyber-therian]

i love to eat dried seaweed … i have hashimoto’s thyroiditis and the iodine in seaweed helps calm some of the symptoms (alongside my meds ofc) and the umami of seaweed also helps with meat cravings since i dont eat meat :3 plussss the salt content helps increase my blood pressure

not to mention makes me feel like a lil fox who just found the most awesomest snack ever by the ocean mmmmm

[ichbinmeltdown]

Does anybody else have this terrible feeling where they're just overly aware of how much time is passing and you desperately want to fill it up somehow but everything you can think of just feels like you'd be wasting that time

Then you end up wasting it anyway because you're just so overwhelmed thinking about how much time you're wasting

A lot of the time I sit there and try to focus on The Sims 4 or look at Tumblr to try and get an idea of what I want to do and I feel every bit as bored as before and stressed out because I did absolutely nothing today and received no enrichment/mental stimulation

[talkethtothehandeth]

Here is a video that talks about the reality of living with Long COVID. This is another reminder that this virus is still prevalent and just as deadly, if not more. COVID has killed nearly seven million (documented cases) people worldwide. You are not immune, you are not invincible, and this is something you should still be taking seriously. It’s not in the past, it is still spreading and mutating and harming and disabling and killing.

Wear your masks, get the vaccines if you can.

Video Length: 1m 16s

Transcription:

"Hi, my name is Hannah, and COVID took my life from me. I was 23 when I got sick in August of 2020, and I'm turning 27 this month. I was an athlete for 10 years, and I had straight A's all through high school. I graduated with honors, multiple scholarships, and I was years in the school for my PsyD. I loved going on adventures, traveling, reading, painting, drawing, I even loved having a job. I even had a healthy immune system, and that was all until I got COVID." - "I've been diagnosed with epilepsy, and the back to back seizures have caused brain damage; it has caused dementia type symptoms, spelling problems, mood changes, POTS, which haused caused me to be hospitalized multiple times with concussions and injuries. I'm on IV infusions and medications for that." - "I have to use a wheelchair, I can no longer legally drive; diabetes, an autoimmune disease, chronic and debilitating fatigue, vision deterioration, had to have my thyroid removed, lost half my hair. I still have a hard time breathing and have low oxygen at points-- chronic pain, muscle aches, tooth decay, increased mental health issues and ideations. I had to quit my job, withdraw from school, and I never see anyone but my family and doctors I can longer draw, travel, and I really struggle with reading, which is my favorite thing." - "My loved ones are terrified to leave me home alone, and I'm scared to even sleep at night because I'm afraid that I won't wake up. I spend my days alone in bed because life has to go on without me. This is the reality of it [long covid]. And 1 in 5 infections cause long COVID. I promise you, you are not invincible."

[flowersofjannah]

I have hypothyroidism and feel tired quite quicker than others my age, it upsets me at times as I’m not always able to do things that I wish to do, or go places I wish to go. I was thinking about it a little while ago and then opened my instagram, Subhanallah this post popped up for me (2nd post I looked at):

Isn’t Allah so beautiful? Redirecting my focus to what’s more important…keeping a good heart. May Allah make it easy for us and purify our hearts, ameen.

[danny-ric]

"Hashimoto's/hypothyroidism isn't a real disability. You're just being dramatic."