Piggyback Post

Firstly, I feel okay. I have been taking 1 1/4 grains of NatureThroid and it's all right. I think that the does needs to be a smidge higher, but I get my blood drawn two weeks from now so I'm trying to wait until then to make any changes. The reason I think the does needs to be increased is because I still have a little bit of arthritis, which is annoying. It goes away completely sometimes during the day and then as the day wears on, it gets worse. :(

Enough about me. Today we went, as a family, to the Barbara Davis Center for Juvenile Diabetes. They are truly awesome there. DH had a regularly scheduled appointment. Our kids are in a study where they look for antibodies that are associated with Type 1 Diabetes, like antibodies against the pancreas.

To facilitate a blood draw with young-uns, they put some numbing cream on their arm and let them play in this awesome playroom for about half an hour. Then, when the blood is drawn, the hope is that they can't really feel too much.

Today when we went to the playroom, there were lots of other kiddos there. There was a three-year-old boy who had diabetes and a 12-year-old girl whose brother was just diagnosed with diabetes recently. The woman in charge of making the room fun (crafty things, movies, etc.) said her son was diagnosed with diabetes when he was 20 months old. Can you imagine? The three year old kiddo was rocking an insulin pump!

The older mom in the room, whose son was diagnosed at 20 months, was proud to report that her son is a healthy 26-year-old today. After years of testing his blood and dosing insulin for him, she handed over control to him when he was in Elementary School. She said she bawled. 

The 12-year-old was uncomfortable and unsure about her brother's diabetes. I guess her family is taking a class to help educate them about diabetes. They ran out of blood testing strips once and everyone freaked out because they didn't know what to do. (Strips are OTC, BTW. ;) She said his friends at school were weirded out that he had diabetes and didn't really hang out with him anymore. :( She seemed to think that he was lazy and that contributed to his disease. I suppose it would if her brother had Type 2 diabetes. It used to be that adolescents and children didn't get Type 2 diabetes, but I hear it's more common nowadays. 

The reason I'm posting about this is just because...this is life. It's not perfect and we're people and we break all the time. I keep seeing people (my husband, those moms, friends, acquaintances) who have met this sort of adversity by making the best of it and moving forward despite the circumstances. It would be so easy to give in and become permanently overwhelmed by the fact that your toddler could DIE without insulin (or fill-in-the-blank with any emotional hurdle), but we make do.

When it came time to draw the blood, DS went first. He was apprehensive but he likes to be aware of what's going on and see everything that's happening. (This, dear friends, could explain the Dentist Debacle.) He watched the needle go into his arm and calmly watched his blood pool in the little beaker. Proud Mama! My little DD wasn't so fortunate. She's a Little Bit and they had trouble getting the seemingly giant needles to fit into her teeny veins. After two pokes, some crying, and a lot of digging around in her arm (yeesh!), the study staff gave up and we decided to try again later.

Hopefully our kids don't develop any antibodies. I would be so saddened. DH with Diabetes, me with autoimmune thyroiditis...makes for a bad genetic recipe. I hope they are blessed with health. And hopefully if we do have another hurdle to leap over, we'll deal with it gracefully. After I dissolve into at least one mandatory fit of tears, that is. ;)

Praise & Purpose

The last few weeks have been interesting, to say the least. I always talk to DH about how I'm feeling, what I'm thinking, etc. etc.

It's come up over and over again how my autoimmune thyroiditis is very similar to DH's diabetes, which is also an autoimmune condition.

Now, I like to believe that God does have a purpose in everything we go through in life, even though we don't understand it or like it.

A fellow blogger who is going through a difficult time wrote the same sentiment like this: "In all this, we know that God is for us. We know He is up to more than we can see from our vantage point, that He is good and loving and worthy of all praise. We also know He desires us to know Him and follow as He leads, so please pray He would reveal Himself clearly, that we would be willing to follow and able to be changed by His Spirit. We are nothing but clay in the hands of our Potter. Let His will, be done."

Perhaps one of the purposes of having health issues is to teach me to understand what my husband is going through all the time and to have more compassion for him. Before I understood what it felt like to be 'sick', I was kind of hard on DH. I wanted him to have the energy and drive that I felt. Now I understand what it is to just feel so tired that all you can do is lay down and sleep. Now I understand that when you're faced with overwhelming fatigue or running errands and doing housework, you always choose to rest. Nothing else seems important when you feel crappy.

I remember when I was in labor with our first child. I wanted DH to stay with me the whole time. The whole time was roughly 18 hours. After about six or seven hours, DH was white-faced, hungry, and bound and determined not to make me angry. He took time out to check his blood and mentioned that he needed to go eat soon. I didn't have room, mentally, for him to leave. It took my friend the nurse worrying about his blood sugar for me to remember that if he didn't eat and keep his blood sugar at adequate levels he could die. So we compromised and I made him eat in the room with me. ;) My point is that I didn't get it then. I didn't understand that even during a major life event he had to keep thinking about his own health, that it had to come first. 

I also understand how difficult it is to manage medications or supplements and figure out exactly what your body needs and craves. Sometimes when DH's blood sugar is high, he is mean, cranky, tired, and just plain frustrated. When his blood sugar is low he is loopy, lightheaded, and still tired. One day when I was describing how frustrating it was to feel hypothyroid and how angry it made me to seesaw back and forth, he pointed out that his blood sugar was very similar.

Compared to all day every day insulin doses and constant blood sugar checking, I have it easy. Right now I have one big problem--thyroid hormone. Right now I am worrying about the dose of one little pill.

My husband doesn't ever let his diabetes hold him back from life (unless it's to take a nap). When he wanted to go on mission trips to Mexico, Nepal, Africa--he went. He figured out how to transport his insulin across the world, keep it cold, make sure it got through security, etc. etc. When I think about traveling somewhere far away and by chance not having the right medicine available, it scares me. Who is the man I married that he can be so fearless about the reality of his life?

 DH, goofing off in the hardware store. :)

All that is to say, I am more compassionate, patient, and understanding now. Not just with my husband, but hopefully with everyone. I understand now how he feels. And I have developed tremendous respect for him because he is joyful, faithful, and he perseveres even though he wishes he didn't have Damn Diabetes. He trusts that there is a reason. 

PSALM 42
For the director of music. A maskil^[c] of the Sons of Korah.

 ¹ As the deer pants for streams of water,
   so my soul pants for you, my God.
² My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
   When can I go and meet with God?
³ My tears have been my food
   day and night,
while people say to me all day long,
   “Where is your God?”
⁴ These things I remember
   as I pour out my soul:
how I used to go to the house of God
   under the protection of the Mighty One^[d]
with shouts of joy and praise
   among the festive throng.
 ⁵ Why, my soul, are you downcast?
   Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
   for I will yet praise him,
   my Savior and my God.
 ⁶ My soul is downcast within me;
   therefore I will remember you
from the land of the Jordan,
   the heights of Hermon—from Mount Mizar.
⁷ Deep calls to deep
   in the roar of your waterfalls;
all your waves and breakers
   have swept over me.
 ⁸ By day the LORD directs his love,
   at night his song is with me—
   a prayer to the God of my life.
 ⁹ I say to God my Rock,
   “Why have you forgotten me?
Why must I go about mourning,
   oppressed by the enemy?”
¹⁰ My bones suffer mortal agony
   as my foes taunt me,
saying to me all day long,
   “Where is your God?”
 ¹¹ Why, my soul, are you downcast?
   Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
   for I will yet praise him,
   my Savior and my God.

The Sun is Shining & Everything Feels All Right

So, I have been quite reluctant to post. Mostly this is because I'm still struggling with feelings of being a hippie failure. There is so much to think about and speculate about. Most of the time instead of researching so much like I did before, I'm just learning to be content with where I'm at. Good lessons, all. So, here's what has happened recently.

The first maybe two days of taking Tirosint, I was feeling good, then I started feeling badly again. After two weeks (so, that's last week sometime), I went to see my D.O., Miss Alexa, who is totally awesome.

I just told her that I feel horrible (again) and she said, quite simply, "Let's try something new." Options were to either up the dose of Tirosint or start taking some natural desiccated thyroid. I chose to try the pig thyroid because I realized that I had been taking a natural dessicated thyroid in the form of Thyroxal. Cow thyroid. I wonder if the additional thyroid hormones in the Thyroxal was something that my body liked.

D.O. also said that if a dose of 88 mcg of Tirosint isn't helping my body enough, then I might have developed a problem processing the synthetic T4 hormone. Not exactly what I wanted to hear. But right now that's just a maybe. Our bodies need things like B Vitamins, magnesium, etc. to properly process thyroid hormones so I am trying to be diligent about making sure I get all the vitamins I need.

Doctor Awesome told me that she had switched many patients over from Synthroid to natural thyroid and all but ONE loved it and felt lots better. All but one. I asked if she preferred natural desiccated thyroid and she honestly told me she did not have a preference, it was just patient preference.

I really respect her as a Doctor because she is truly interested in a patient as a whole. She mentioned that often times hypothyroid patients who came in had all the right 'numbers' but still felt horrid. Instead of ignoring their complaints, she was willing to switch things up and try a different med.

I mentioned that I was interested in having another baby and Doctor Awesome basically said, "Uh, lets get you figured out first." Which was sad but something that was helpful to hear at the same time.

I think today is Day Four of Piggie Thyroid medicine and I quite like it. I had been having a mid-morning crash every day but I think it was because I took all my vitamins straight away in the a.m. in a big bunch. I forgot to do that today and I actually am less fatigued. ? I have no idea why taking all your vitamins together would cause a body to be fatigued, but okay.

A few days ago I talked with my good friend and she said something that made me feel a little bit less like a failure. I said that after all this time it sure seems like my thyroid isn't kicking in to do it's own job, despite my diet changes and whatnot. I still have this magical hope that someday my thyroid will kick in, especially since my anti-body levels are 'normal'. Anyway, Nina basically said "Why not?" as in, why couldn't your thyroid someday still start working again? "Every three years all the cells in your body turn over, so why couldn't your thyroid come back?" And that was nice to hear. :)

So, here's to feeling better. May God bless my poor, tired frame!

Everything Looks Perfect From Far Away

I haven't written in a while because part of me no longer knows what to write. I feel like a little bit of a Hippie Failure right now, but I can't say I regret giving up on Thyroxal. I have been on Tirosint for two weeks. Those two weeks, while an improvement, haven't been perfect. Guess the ongoing lesson is still patience.

By comparison, four weeks ago, my hair had started falling out again, I was incredibly fatigued, headachy, you know...so, whatever was wrong with the Thyroxal wasn't good for me, bottom line. (Can you tell I'm trying to convince myself too?) Decisions to be made with health and medicine are never easy. There's always a scale, balancing the risks and benefits. Sigh. I still feel like I'm covering up sypmtoms in some way by taking a pill. But that's why I'm trying to take my nutrition more seriously and why I am still avoiding wheat & milk.

I haven't talked to CAG since not taking herbal thyroid stuff...I'm not due for an appointment anytime soon. For peace of mind, I think I will see him again eventually to discuss everything.

In cheerier news, peppermint oil is still my very bestest friend! I have been taking a pill (ha!) before every meal and I have been maintaining weight wonderfully. Praise God!

I talked with a friend recently who is also trying to figure out what is going on with her thyroid and adrenal glands. She had a very high TPO count, the thyroid antibody. She's also crazy like me (so nice to be with company) and goes to some holistic-kind of docs. They are currently trying to figure out what is going on with her immune system to cause such an imbalance.

I have read about this before but hadn't really spent any time trying to figure out what was going on with me. Partially I didn't spend time on it because CAG didn't mention it.

The theory is that one branch of your immune system (out of Th1 or Th2) is responsible for your immune craziness. One branch (humoral) is responsible for antibody production and attacks while the other (cell-mediated immunity) uses macrophages, cytokines, and something called cytotoxic T-lymphocytes to protect your body. I have no idea what I'm saying. Anyway, I looked some things up.

Here is an excerpt from a speech by a doctor: "Dr. Cheney explained that the immune system has two different modes of attack, based on the type of invader. One is Th1 (T Helper 1). It goes after organisms that get inside our cells ‚ intracellular pathogens. It is also known as cell-mediated immunity. The other is Th2 (T Helper 2). It attacks extracellular pathogens ‚ organisms that are found outside the cells in blood and other body fluids. Some call this humoral or antibody-mediated immunity. A healthy immune system is dynamic, able to switch back and forth as needed, quickly eradicating one threat and then resting before responding to the next."

And here is the discussion board I keep running across: "An autoimmune condition occurs when one branch of the immune system over dominates another branch. This is called an either a Th1 or Th2 dominance. A dominant TH1 response means that the natural killer cells and cytotoxic t cells are responsible for attacking the body, while a TH2 dominance indicates that your bcells and antibodies are mounting the attack."

Here's the really interesting part to me. This dude (a quoted Chiropracter) goes on to explain that "It is well documented in clinical research that Th1 stimulants are Echinacea, maitake mushrooms and golden seal to name a few. Th2 stimulators are caffeine, green tea, and grape seed extract. So in the example I gave in the previous slide, if a patient with an under functioning thyroid is TH1 dominant, then I would prescribe supplements containing caffeine, green tea, and grape seed extract to stimulate the TH2 side to regain balance. If they were TH2 dominant, then Echinacea, mushrooms, and golden seal would balance out their immune system. Since most people with autoimmune conditions have no idea which branch of their immune system is dominant, they can actually make their condition worse by taking over the counter immune boosters. Lets say for example you were Th1 dominant and you catch a cold. A friend tells you that Echinacea helped them so you take it yourself. Unknowingly you would be flaring up your already dominant Th1 response and cause even more destruction to your thyroid gland. Conversely, if you were Th2 dominant and you read on the internet that green tea, and grape seed extract could boost your immune system you would be flaring up your already dominant Th2 response and fire up an autoimmune attack to your thyroid. This can go on for years and years eventually shrinking your thyroid gland and slowing down your metabolism further. Meanwhile your medical doctor would interpret this as a need to increase the dosage of your thyroid hormones."

A comment on this posting and a suggestion I've heard from other folks is to try to see, based on how you feel, which branch of your immune system is dominant and try to re-balance things out. One day, you drink green tea and caffeine all day (no sugar!) and see if you feel better. The next day you drink echinacea tea all day and see if that makes you feel better or worse.

Well, I have now officially tried both. I'm a very willing tea drinker. :) The Green Tea day I was FULL of energy but I still didn't feel great, sometimes light-headed, sometimes dizzy. For the record, I didn't have coffee or energy drinks, just black tea. The echinacea day was about the same, minus some of the energy! I took a few echinacea pills that also had goldenseal, and cayenne. It was totally inconclusive.

I have read however that certain herbs help to balance both branches--turmeric and ginger to name two. Today instead of going overboard with green tea or echinacea, I had turmeric and a little green tea. Better. What is a Guinea Pig to make of that?!