First of all, and most importantly about this blog post is that you must understand that this is a blog for you and not for me.
This is in no way a ‘poor me’ blog and not one which should make you reach for your keyboard to message to see if I'm ok, that particularly relates to you Mum and Dad who I've just seen in the house, I'm fine, I really am all good.
I just want to share my experience with other people to perhaps help them on their way.
So, in general terms as I reach the end of sab 5.0, I've had the most extraordinary time and I think that this is probably the best effort I've had at a sabbatical, with a balance between work and family and a bit of exercise and a bit of looking after myself.
And so, overall, I'm in a good place and I'm in a much, much better place than the terrible and horrible dark days of March last year, and in particular the night of the Stormzy concert in Nottingham where I actually felt like I was going to die and I was a mess in tears on my sofa, unable to leave the house. It feels a lot better since then.
At that stage, I had descended into acute hypothyroidism which, when my bloods were measured, showed that my circulating thyroxine was as close to zero as it's likely to get without causing a significant problem.
It seemed at that time that my thyroid had just tanked, but after a number of blood tests and consultations and discussions and considerations and thoughts this year, it seems to be obvious now, both to me instinctively, but also biochemically, that I was suffering from hypothyroidism as a result of a covid infection, viral induced thyroiditis.
And so, then you dance the dance with trying to medicate things and trying to get better and trying to get yourself to exactly where you were before because that's what should happen and when you meet people who suffer from hypothyroidism, many of them say just take the tablets and then you'll be fine and so I couldn't understand why I was just taking the tablets and I wasn't fine.
Somehow or other (and I'm still absolutely unclear as to how I managed to do this) I went to France last year with Louis and Alex and Carl and I had the most extraordinary adventure in the Pyrenees, even though I was riding right at the back with all the slow guys, I managed to do much more in France than I ever imagined I would, but I think that was probably my undoing.
And so, when I came out of that and the effects of it filtered through, I dropped like a stone at the end of August and ended up very close to the March situation at the end of September.
Please read tomorrows blog where this will be continued…
Blog Post Number - 3346