Firstly, as a caveat, I don’t write this looking for sympathy or help or really any direct recognition.
In my mind I hope to write it as a help to other people who are:
Back in May I gave an account of where I was in terms of my diagnosed hypothyroidism, the main symptoms of which had started in February of this year and the diagnosis had come in the middle of March.
It was a condition and a situation that had been developing for some time, but it now seems clear that it was kicked on in a big way by an asymptomatic covid infection in January.
As I’ve travelled through my HYPOT journey I reach the end of the line with my GP NHS treatment (through no fault of my wonderful GP) and just through the fault of the recommendation of how the NHS treats hypothyroidism and particularly how it treats it in patients who don’t respond how the book says.
And so, I managed to get my medication to a level that was seemingly acceptable in terms of the books (150mcg/125mcg alternate days) and my TSH (thyroid stimulating hormone which is the hormone that is supressed when you have enough thyroxine in your system) was at a very low level meaning that I had a spot responded appropriately.
Everyone clapped their hands and jumped for joy because your numbers say that things are fine.
Things did not feel fine.
At that stage I was just unhappy that I hadn’t reached back to the levels where I’d been in January of this year and felt that there was still more to go and that the medicine wasn’t quite replacing what I needed.
Maybe there’s something else at play here. Maybe there is some long covid or something else related to this but at that stage I was at perhaps 80-90% of my best self and wondered if there was anything I could do to be better.
With the consultant that I wrote about here who did a full and detailed assessment of not only me but also my blood screen and in negotiation with me (shared care in its ideal form) we decided to undertake a trial of T3 (levothyroxine).
The theory behind using T3 in combination with T4 for both of those is that it’s faster acting and so, if you don’t respond entirely well to 1 dose of T4 a day in the morning you can reduce that dose and add 1 or 2 doses of T3 through the day to boost yourself when the dips start to come.
There are caveats to taking that.
You mustn’t take it if your heart rate increases because it can cause problems and you mustn’t take it before you exercise (slightly difficult for me because I exercise sometimes 6 days out of 7).
With this in mind, we found a solution and a system where I dropped 100mcg of T4 first thing in the morning followed by 10mg of T3 when I’d finished exercising followed by another 10mg of T3 anytime up to 2pm in the afternoon (later than this can stop you sleeping).
And so, you’re committing to 3 doses of medicine a day but for an improved quality of life overall. Didn’t seem like much of a compromise for me.
And so, at the start of September I began the new regime and, in a flourish, and in a typical Campbell like, idiot way, I took my first dose in the middle of the day at work and I went to Hayley so she could see me take it. I told her that this was going to make me superman and away I went.
Sadly, that’s not what happened. It never made me superman; it was actually my kryptonite.
It takes a while for the T4 that you’ve been taking over months to reduce in its affect, but it would appear that the T3 that I started to take was having no affect and therefore my reduced dose of T4 started to kick in towards the end of September.
This is a subtle thing (at least to start with) where you feel a bit tired and can’t be arsed and eat a bit more shit and cancel a few training sessions all in keeping with what happens at this time of the year anyway so you can talk yourself out of it.
Then it came to Tuesday a few weeks ago where I fell off the cliff again (as I did pretty much in February) and then I continued to fall through Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.
I emailed my genius clinician on Wednesday and he told me to immediately revert back to my previous dose regime where I had been functioning pretty well and complaining that I was 10% short of perfect.
The problem with this is it might take 4 weeks to get back there again.
I presented an Aesthetic master class to a small group a few weeks ago at the practice. I was really excited about this course and honestly wanted to provide the best thing that I’ve ever done.
I managed to make it through the course but towards the end I felt like I was clinging onto a blackboard with my fingernails and gripping the chalk.
I’m lucky that the feedback for the course was fantastic and I hope that I didn’t let people down but it’s interesting that in search of 10% better I’ve catapulted myself to 50% worse.
Then, at the weekend, I sat on my arse and probably ate the wrong things and didn't ride my bike but it gave me the strength to attack work the week after but it’s the stuff outside of work that will suffer.
Alison will have to take the burden of things at home, I’ll need to be in bed by 9pm, I won’t ride my bike and become a miserable b@st@rd but at work I’ll have a big smile on my face and make sure nobody and particularly anybody in the patient base think there’s any sort of problem.
It’s manageable this, entirely manageable. It just feels sad that you end up in a place where your less than the best version of yourself.
By the time it got to the end of August I had been able to pull myself back to a position where I was heading towards the best version of myself and realising that I was only a little bit off that and decided to alter my medication regime to try and hit new heights.
It will take some weeks now to get anywhere close to heading back up that mountain again.
I decided to tell this story (and honestly Dad, I’m fine and you don’t have to phone) because it’s important for us all to understand that everyone has to carry a bag of bricks.
Some people are devastatingly distressed about the cost-of-living increase at the moment and some people are looking after sick relatives and some people are carrying conditions that nobody knows about and some people are just terribly sad.
We all have a story to tell and when we have the opportunity to tell it and someone to listen to it, we should.
The main purpose of writing this is that you should tell me your story when you see me because I will understand because I can relate it back to the struggles that I’ve had too.
Blog Post Number - 3231