If you didn’t read part 1, you can read it here.
I’m supposed to be training for the Haute Route Pyrenees which is the biggest physical challenge of my life except I’m not training or hardly training at all.
I’m doing this with Louis and Alex, and they are smashing the sh*t out of their training and getting better and better and I’m having to take a big deep breath before I walk up the stairs at work.
So, it’s after covid, I think, and I’m not exempt from that.
And some of the after covid stuff comes even if you’ve had no symptoms through covid itself and some of it comes months later.
And in the list of after covid symptoms that’s listed on the NHS website, I’ve pretty much got them all.
And so, on the 6th of March I spoke to my friend Mike who’s a cardiologist and asked him “am I being a dick if I phone my doctor, do I just have to suck it up and deal with the after covidness?”.
He said no and said phone the doctor and so I did on Monday the 7th and they took blood tests on Friday the 11th.
Saturday the 12th was my 50th birthday party, a joint affair with my daughter Rosie who turned 18.
People came from Scotland and Ireland and lots of other places, but Alison and I spoke about cancelling it because of the shape I’m in.
I decided that I really wanted to do it and so on the evening of Saturday the 12th I took 2 ibuprofen and 2 paracetamol and drank 4 pints and had a wonderful time.
I wore a big Superdry shirt which covered the fact that my jeans were unbuttoned and my stomach was hanging out over the top of my jeans.
I’ve put on a stone in 8 weeks.
On Tuesday the 15th my phone rang whilst I was in my office and it was the doctors surgery.
She wasn’t going to phone me if my bloods were normal so they’re not.
I’ll remember that phone call but particularly watching my phone as the name of my medical practice (having not been to a GP in 16 years) flashed in front of me and I wondered what the answer would be.
It couldn’t be a tumour because I’d be the first person in history to put on a stone with a tumour (probably), I wondered what she would say.
In the end it was the best possible diagnosis that you could get if you were going to get a diagnosis from that blood screen, but it was hypothyroidism.
There are a billion people in the world with hypothyroidism and it’s an eminently treatable condition so I’m not about to sit here and complain and do a ‘poor me’ when there is really good treatment which is really simple and inexpensive to the NHS which just takes a while (in most cases) to get right and to equilibrate.
So, on the 16th I started thyroxin at an extraordinarily low dose (25 mcg) because I’m over 50 and apparently at risk of heart attack but on further examination and investigation and discussion with some extraordinary people I should probably have started them 125-150 mcg. The trouble was that I fell further off the cliff and so Sunday 20th was the worst.
In some ways I was relieved that now my ‘thing’ had a name and a story behind it but the list of symptoms for acute hypothyroidism are brutal and I pretty much had every single one (except for a susceptibility to coldness). Perhaps the worst is the sadness (tinged with a degree of anxiety) which it turns out has been coming on for a while.
Alison thinks it’s been around for maybe 18 months just dropping down step wise and maybe it was provoked significantly with the covid assault which gave me no symptoms except for perhaps finishing off the thyroid gland.
Your thyroid gland is controlled by your pituitary gland which releases a hormone called TSH.
Ideally a TSH should sit in very low single figures and mine was about 15. The consultant Endocrinologist that I spoke to wanted my circulating thyroid levels to be around 17 and they started at 6 so my pituitary was working full steam to try and squeeze everything out of my thyroid which was squeezing very little out.
I had the muscle pain and the breathlessness and the weight gain and the forgetfulness and the tiredness (oh god the tiredness) and the sadness and the anxiety and the kidney problem and the constipation (yuck) and all the other things that were listed.
As I write this it’s Saturday the 9th of April and I’m not quite out of the woods yet but I’ve increased 100 mcg and I feel well enough to write this. I’m not writing it for sympathy, I’m writing it for honesty.
A few weeks ago, I told my team at a team day what was going on and I got messages independently from members of my team to say thank you for being honest and so I write it here to be honest.
As soon as my medicine is sorted, the likelihood is I will be f*ck@ng supersonic.
Not sure I’ll make the Haute Route from start to finish but if I can cycle for an hour I will and I will be there.
I haven’t missed my work and I won’t miss it now and I’ve tried to contribute to the things I committed to as much as I could although I’ve probably been running on about 30%.
So, I’m sorry if I didn’t get back to you if you contacted me or I’m sorry if I forgot or I was less than you expected.
I think it does those who work in healthcare a huge service when you become a patient again, I think I should be a patient every 2-3 years to remind me what it’s like for the people who sit in front of me as patients.
It will give me something to write about in these pages going forwards but if you meet me and my voice seems a little bit hoarse, it’s not because I’m trying to be Bonnie Tyler, it’s probably just because I forgot to take my tablet.
Blog Post Number - 3055
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