I meant to update the
HYPOT series of blogs for some time after I initially wrote about it in the first half of last year.
My purpose in writing about it last year was to share that I'd been diagnosed with hypothyroidism, which now seems definitely due to viral-induced thyroiditis following an asymptomatic COVID exposure in January of 2023.
My journey through hypothyroidism was pretty grim until it started to get under control in about June of that year.
Stupidly or otherwise, I decided to continue to participate in the Haute Route Pyrenees starting on the 3rd of July last year, and when I exited out of this, I was broken and in bits.
It was fine for July and into August, but all of a sudden, I started to tank with similar symptoms to that which had happened in January, February and March at the start of the year:
• Extraordinary bone-deep tiredness and fatigue
• Mind fog, forgetting people's names and all sorts of things I would never forget
• Massive dips in the middle of the day with difficulty in concentrating
• Weight gain
• Lethargy, challenging to get out of bed in the morning.
All of this stuff was quite atypical to what would typically happen for me, but through September and October, things got worse and worse.
Those were the times when I sought the help of Hisham Maksoud, the genius endocrinologist who then made the diagnosis of exclusion of long COVID.
My hypothyroidism had moved on (although it never goes away because it's susceptible to many different things).
I ground through the long COVID situation all through the early winter to Christmas when there was a slight break.
I had a sabbatical which was brilliant and allowed me to recharge some of my batteries, only to return back and back into the symptoms that I've had before.
One of the other things is the legs; oh, the legs are f*cking awful.
I understand fatiguing legs because it would not be unusual for me to ride for four or five hours on a bike and then come home and do whatever for the rest of the day domestically around the house.
But I can walk around, having not done any exercise, and my legs feel like they've been put through a mincer, and that is depressing knowing that you haven't done anything and are just gaining weight.
I started to come out of things and get better and saw a reduction in my symptoms towards March or April of this year, and in fact, when I saw Hisham on the 29th of April, I told him I was at 90%, which was the best I had been throughout the whole time of going to see him.
He came to visit the practice a short while afterwards in June, where I reported that I was 100%, but it was only after that, that I started to tank again.
It turns out that thyroxin is one of the medicines which is highly susceptible to generic dose changes.
It means that the NHS prescribes to you whichever version of thyroxin genetically is the cheapest at the time, so you can go from one manufacturer one month to another the next and to another the next again.
It turns out that there are particular types of manufactured thyroxine which I don't absorb very well, and I, therefore, have to be really careful what I take.
And so, for the whole of July, I tanked again, my fitness dropped, my weight increased, my blood pressure went up, and my bloods went off the rails.
It was only by accident when I started to take a different generic thyroxin that I improved again, and on seeing Hisham for my three-month review, he confirmed that that is a well-published phenomenon which seemingly is not really taken into account when you're prescribed NHS thyroxine.
As I am today, I'm at 80%, and I'm continuing to function well; my work is great, my training could be a little bit better, and I could be a little bit thinner.
I'm also over 50, so I can use that as an excuse, but what this is about is to show people that the view that we get on social media or websites or any presentation of somebody externally often comes with a much greater story.
Over the past two years, I've suffered from significant PTSD after what happened during the pandemic.
There are still elements of that, although it is mostly resolved.
When I was coming out of that, I developed hypothyroidism and then long COVID.
I know other people that are suffering from these things. It's good to share.
I just want people to know they're not alone when times are shit.
Blog Post Number - 3543