Since I’ve been back my thyroid has been wreaking it’s annoying old havoc. While I was away it was so much calmer, perhaps one day a week of pain. For the past week, it’s been four days of pain, which is how it was before I left. I’m still trying to work out what triggers it. In the meantime, I cope, I modulate, I recalibrate and I try to see it all as a necessary gift.
I just had a bad few days of it over the weekend. So I thought I would share just how a typical thyroid day transpires for me, while it’s fresh. And how I cope with the various symptoms. Not to garner pity*, but to comfort those out there with chronic illness who grapple with the loneliness of it all. Mostly, I find, when you have chronic, unexplainable, unfixable illness, all you want is to know you’re not alone and that your symptoms are real and understandable and worthy of recognition, if only via some stranger’s blog post.
* although, if I’m honest, I’m often seeking “leeway” from the world.
But also – and I say this often – I reckon what I learn from having auto-immune disease is applicable to anyone wanting to lead a better, more well life. A life closer to the core. More real. More conscious. When you have an auto-immune disease you are that much more sensitive to the bad shit we do to ourselves and that we’re forced to put up with – the smells, the additives… the noise. We are the canaries down the mineshaft. Want to know what’s bad for you? What’s doing you damage? Ask an AI sufferer! They feel it with their every pore in real time where others often do not.
So. My Sunday.