Nostalgia and Hypothyroidism

The other night I dug out some old photo boxes looking for baby pictures of my daughters to compare to my five-month old grandson to how much he looks like us. Conclusion, he very much takes after his momma, my youngest daughter. Opening those boxes is like going down a rabbit hole of memories. I spent quite a bit of time sorting through photos that went back to the time I was just 21 years old. As I hold each photo that captures my attention, I am transported back 30 or so years (how can it be that long?) remembering the moment and how I felt.

Much as we do, when we look back at old photos of ourselves, we might think but I wasn’t fat, I wasn’t unattractive, why did I think that? I imagine the majority of us humans do so. One photo is from when I was twenty-three holding my second daughter at dinner at her first Christmas with my mom’s family. I’m dressed in a muted gold turtleneck sweater, a black wool skirt that came to just my knees, black tights and a pair of comfy flats. I remember feeling so fat and uncomfortable, unhappy with myself for gaining weight during my first two pregnancies. I thought I was a whale. Now, in hindsight and close to thirty years later, I see a pretty young mom who wasn’t a petite twig but not a whale by any means.

We are just so hard on ourselves trying to live up to some heralded idea of how we should look or be. I always felt bad because I hadn’t completed my planned college path, that I ended up falling in love (or so I thought) and getting married at 20. Nothing quite works out the way we plan and for some reason, our tendency is to think we are the only ones this happens to, that everyone else is on track and we just went off the rails. That’s really not true, there are probably a select few people who everything goes as they plan it but for most of us, our path is a winding road that doubles back on itself, criss-crosses, dead-ends and is frequently under construction. And that’s perfectly fine.

As I kept going through photo after photo, chronologically creeping closer to the present day, of course my children changed dramatically but I saw the changes in myself as well. Most of my youth, I thought I was fat and ugly but now I know I wasn’t. But most interestingly to me is I see physical evidence of when my hypothyroidism started or became more prevalent. Hypothyroidism runs in the women on both sides of my family. Several of my aunts, both my grandmothers and my mother were all diagnosed with hypothyroidism with the majority of it being later in life but like me, I was finally diagnosed at 40 though I started having symptoms in my mid-thirties about the time I also started peri-menopausal symptoms. All of the sudden without any significant change to my diet or activity, I started gaining weight.

This threw me into panic mode and I upped the dieting craziness. But to no avail. To lose weight, I all the sudden had to starve myself. I decided this was due to aging. I was going into mid-life, well I guess midlife is actually for women around 35 if you go by the average age of death for women in the US. Eventually, my symptoms got worse. My hair was falling out and breaking like crazy, my skin so dry I couldn’t use enough moisturizer and I was essentially a slug. This is also the time my chronic depression kicked in and brought me to the point of being suicidal. I didn’t want to live, I didn’t want to do anything, I could barely get myself out of bed. Part of this also was a bad marriage which in a few years, I got a divorce but physically, I was a mess in my mid 30’s.

There is a photo of my mom and I sitting in camp chairs when I was thirty-six that I was so heavy and bloated looking that I didn’t recognize myself. It was around this time that my depression had gotten so severe that I went to my family doctor for medication. Zoloft was prescribed and within a week I felt as if I had been resurrected out of a dark tunnel into the light. I also bought my first mountain bike and started riding. I went to the gym to weight train and I felt a lot better overall. Eventually that marriage ended and my life change significantly for the better. But the other symptoms got worse. So as I did some research, I found that hypothyroidism had the same symptoms assigned to it. My grandmothers had both been hypo and recently my one aunt had been diagnosed.

Unfortunately, my family doctor only ran a TSH and not a full panel. You can be hypothyroid and your TSH will read within normal limits. His advice was the same, diet and exercise. Except diets fail 95% of the time. It took several years before my OB diagnosed it by running a T4 free and a few other parameters because my periods were crazy heavy. My TSH was still normal but she started me on a lower dose of Synthroid and low and behold, my symptoms were alleviated to a more manageable level. Did I lose weight? No. There is this misnomer that once your hypothyroidism is treated, that you magically lose all the weight you gained. Everyone I know who is hypo has not lost weight when they were finally treated.

A few years ago, my hair stylist recommended that I take biotin to help my hair grow better. What I didn’t know or research myself was how biotin may affect my TSH readings. I had been taking it for a few months and then had my yearly doctor’s visit which includes blood work and my TSH. The biotin skewed the TSH results making it appear that it I needed a higher dose of Synthroid. After a few days of taking the higher dose, I felt awful. I started trying to figure out why. Eventually, I found the biotin-hypothyroid connection and went back to my doctor who again dismissed me and said come back in 3 months. Yes, I need a new family physician and have been searching for one in the area taking new patients. The hard part is finding one that doesn’t believe that diets and weight loss are the magic cure for every ailment of a fat person.

So I took matters into my own hands and figured out how much to cut off my Synthroid pill to get close to the dose I was taking before this past blood test. This is not an exact science and while it helped me feel better, I wasn’t quite where I needed to be. During this time without changing my eating habits or activity levels, I frustratingly gained about 25 pounds. All because I had the wrong dosage. And of course, it has stubbornly stuck to me. For me to lose weight right now, I have to essentially starve myself. Starving oneself is just another way to fuck up your metabolism more than I had already with yo-yo diets, food restriction, eating disorders and so on and so forth.

Staring at the progressing of photos I set aside of myself from age twenty-one to my late 30’s, I realized that I had dismissed hypothyroidism as an actual medical issue. People joke about fat people always blaming their thyroid so I had bought into that I was the problem without even realizing it. The fact is, that I have a real medical condition. One that makes it extremely hard to lose weight. I remembered that I had used to keep a food journal in my late 20’s and early 30’s before I believe I started to become hypo. I dug one out yesterday morning and skimmed through the entries. On the average, I ate more then than I do now. I ate more fast food, more junk food, and so on. I could eat a bunch of junk food over a day or two and not gain anything. Now if I did that, I’d have to go buy the next size up pants just so I had something to wear. On the whole, I’m way more active now than then as well. So I’ve improved my eating and activity habits but I’m several sizes bigger than I was at that time.

I spent some time yesterday morning looking up medical studies on hypothyroidism especially in women (very little data) and in relation to weight gain or loss. One study completely excluded a female group from the results because they were perimenopausal. WTF? A study run by men felt that perimenopause was the only reason these women were having symptoms. Again, women are dismissed due to their natural hormonal cycles. I would think that this should be studied closer because of how perimenopause affects so much in women’s bodies, not dismissed. “Oh, Bob, they are going through the change, that’s their problem.”

A lot of studies referred back to a 1940’s study which was all men that stated that weight gain was only from water retention which subsided when the subjects were treated with medication. But the interesting fact here is that women are more likely to be hypo than men. Plus, I doubt that 25lb weight gain when my dosage amount was off, was water weight. If so, when I started getting the correct dosage, shouldn’t I had spent a day or two in the bathroom and then been right as rain?

The thing is weight stigma had gotten so lodged into my brain that I have been beating myself up that I don’t weigh what I did in my 20’s. There was something wrong with me, the way I eat, I had to exercise more (I already clock in 65-70 minutes a day on average of activity) and so on. Except what is really happening is between years of dieting which has screwed up my metabolism coupled with hypothyroidism, means that this may be just where my body is happy now. Unless I want to starve myself for the rest of my life. There are recent studies which look at people who never dieted against those who have a long history of dieting and guess who weighs more and has more eating disorders? Not the people who had never dieted.

So what to do? I have to let it all go which is easier said than done. Every day, I catch myself in some unconscious diet culture thought. Every day, I work at stopping those thoughts. It is so ingrained in me that it happens without me noticing it. But I want to be free of this crap. I’ve come a long way and my last leg of the journey is mostly eradicating diet culture thoughts and restrictive eating from my life. To gently accept that I have a legit medical condition that affects my metabolic system that isn’t an excuse, it’s a reality. That I don’t have to control what I eat, my body will tell me what to eat, how much it needs as long as I quit trying to mentally override its wisdom. My biology always wins anyway. I restrict and starve my body, it fights back by slowing down my metabolism even more. Maybe, when my body no longer is in fear of being starved to death, it will relax but no one really has studied if this is the case.

I also need to accept I have body dysmorphia and have had that for a very long time. Being in my 50’s looking back at me in my 20’s, this is clearly evident. On the flip side of that, I need to acknowledge that most likely if I’m lucky to live to my 80’s, I will look back on my 50-something self and think, WTF were you thinking? You were perfect just as you are. How I wish I had those years back, I wouldn’t waste them on worrying about how I look or what my clothing size was.

Bottom line is that I want to be free of all of this crap I’ve carried for decades and I want to just enjoy my life, what I have left. All this I worry about, it means nothing at the end.

Time for Change…

The quandary with being mid-life is that you’ve lived a lot of years but also you (hopefully) have a lot of years ahead of you.  You also realize though that you don’t have your entire life in front of you either and that your days must start counting for more.  I think this is sometimes called a mid-life crisis but I think for most people it’s just a time to really stop and check the path they are on.  Stop running on autopilot, step back and say, is this the life I want? Is this what I should be spending my precious time doing?  It’s a self-check moreso usually than a crisis.  I have yet to want to buy a sports car, get a really young husband and well, I guess the female version to the combover is to dress and try to look like a teenager to the point you look ridiculous.  I think a lot of older women are not accepting looking like little old ladies and that’s great but you have to do it with finesse and style, not copy your 16-year old daughter.  

Yesterday, a young girl in our community died days after her attempt at suicide.  Thousands of people had been praying for her and her family but it was not enough to bring upon a miracle.  This girl is part of my family doctor’s family, his two older sons graduated with my daughters and since he’s been my doctor for ages, his kids essentially grew up with mine.  Not that we were close, they didn’t invite me over for dinner but in a small community like ours, everyone knows everything and you interact through many different channels.  

I can remember her as a baby, toddler, young girl and a teenager.  She was a beautiful sweet girl with seemingly everything a girl could want at least from the outside but yet this tragedy occurred.  Of course the rumor mill is running rampant with why she may have done it, but the only person that truly knows is gone.  People will judge her parents and make assumptions but the real truth is, this could happen in anyone’s family.   So sit down and focus on what is your life.  Say a prayer of peace and comfort for the family instead of stirring up the gossip. 

Suicide is the one thing, unless you’ve been on the verge of committing it yourself, it’s easy to stand there and say “how could she do this?” Essentially for many different reasons, you come to a point where everything feels hopeless and you feel the only way out, the only way for peace is death.  This could be from a mental cause such as depression, chemical imbalance in your brain, drugs (both prescription and illegal) and so on.  The Cherokee Indians had a saying that roughly was “Do not judge a man without walking in his moccasins” or the more modern “walk a mile in his/her shoes”.  Have some empathy, don’t just stand there and judge.  Try to see what it might have been from someone’s view. 

In my mid 30’s, I had a bought of depression so bad that I would wake up and then curse the fact I hadn’t died in my sleep.  It scared me enough to get treatment which was prescribed by this very Doctor.  He gave me Zoloft and finally that urge to die subsided.  It’s not always “just in your head”, mental illness many times is physiological and not just psychological.    You can’t “snap out of” depression.  It’s like telling someone with a broken leg to just think positive and it will heal.  Yeah it may heal but maybe not heal right. You may walk with a limp the rest of your life because it needed set.  You get the idea.

On the news yesterday that this girl passed away, I was sitting there thinking about my life.  Yesterday was also the two-year anniversary of my mom’s death.  I was feeling reflective anyway but this tragic news pushed me even deeper into thought.  The last few years especially, I have had time to work on myself, things that happened to me years ago and their effect on me today was forefront in my life.  If you read my blog consistently, you know I’ve talked about self-esteem issues, body image, mid-life, grief and a whole host of topics that are relevant to me as well as many other people’s lives.  The greatest complement I have received from my writing is when someone thanks me for being candid enough to write about a hard subject because they feel less alone and I’ve helped them in some small way. 

The thing about death is that it reminds you to live.  I’ve spent a lot of time in the last few years working out my grief, working out issues from years ago because I either pushed it down or I simply didn’t have time for myself.  This is the first time in my life since I was a teenager that I have been able to really focus on myself because I was no longer actively taking care of someone else.  Having all this time to think was both good and bad.  Just the other day I wrote something about a traumatic experience that happened when I was 14.  It was one of those times where I started writing it in my head first and I needed to get it down on “paper”.  When I told a friend about it, they said why do you keep reliving this stuff?  Me being me, I was annoyed at first with what they said.  I am a stubborn learner at time and yesterday it finally clicked with me what they were trying to tell me.  

Yes I could use my traumatic experience to reach others and help someone else but by doing so, I was keeping the past in the present.   The beauty of youth is you don’t have years of the past to ruminate on.  You live each day looking to just that day and sometimes toward the future.  I try to be mindful of each day and live in the present but I tend to be all over the board.  I have no clue what I want in my future to be other than a happy, healthy family, be able to live comfortably, finish my degree and publish a book.  I don’t have the fiery, motivated goals of my youth and sometimes that bothers me.  I have no idea why, maybe because I feel like I am not “doing enough”.  It seems even more imperative now at the age of 46 that I should be “reaching for some big dream” before it’s too late.  

As I sat there alone thinking about my mom and this young girl’s life being cut too short, I realized I need to live for today and stop worrying so much about the future or achieving some great thing.  I simply need to follow my heart and stop worrying so damned much.  I need to let go of the past, I have worked hard to get where I am today and be the person I’ve become.  I’m proud of the person I am today even if I’m not always proud of my past life.  I’ve made many mistakes, my life was a train wreck when I was younger but so what?  As the 1000 memes going around social media say,  you get a new start every day or something to that effect.  Really all I need is a change in focus and attitude.  It’s that simple. 

In the effort to live each day to the fullest and live in the present, I’ve decided to suspend my blog for the time being.  I need some time to refocus myself and just live my life by embracing each day as a new opportunity.  Focus on spending time with the people that I love the most and make me the happiest rather than putting energy into those relationships that do not add much if anything to my life.  I am going to let go of the “should of’s” as well.  I should do this, be this or achieve this.  This is a lot of white noise that confuses me and makes it difficult for me to enjoy life.  In essence, I’m going to hit the “reset” button and start new again.   Maybe I will pick up my blog again with a different goal in my writing.  We will see.  

Go live for today, do what makes you happy and don’t look back.  Find your passion, take a chance and live your dreams.  There is never going to be the perfect day for it, do it today, start today.  Live for today, you have no guarantee there is a tomorrow.  Be prepared to fail and hear “no” many times over, but don’t give up.  The one difference between the people who achieve their dreams and the ones who don’t is usually the fact they didn’t give up and not because they nailed it right from the start.  

So in conclusion, this blog has been a wonderful journey which forced me to get myself and my writing out in the public eye.  I am grateful to all that have read it, who have commented on it and who might miss it just a little bit.  I am going to focus on my dream of publishing a novel.  Wish me luck!  Or better yet, wish me tenacity to stick it out and get over or around all the challenges I will face (mostly being too self-critical of my writing – ha…).  Deep breath and first steps…

Clues From the Dreams of Your Youth

As most people know, we bought a new house and moved out into the boonies or BFE, whichever you prefer to refer to it (hey that rhymes a bit!).  And that I wish I had moved out of the city limits years ago but was trying to be frugal and financially responsible so I didn’t dare think outside the lines.  Financially of course, it made sense to stay in our old house, after all the mortgage, with escrow, was less than most people’s apartment rent.  Plus we had done a ton of work to the place.  But none of us was really happy there anymore.  Once we fixed what we thought was wrong with the place, well things were just still ‘wrong’.

My husband drug me out looking at homes, kicking and screaming because I wanted to say financially ‘safe’ and well, I had been entrenched in that house for 15 years.  He was right and I was wrong and hell I even admitted to him.  He may have written it down in his calendar as a major life event.  “Laura admitted I was right.”  Kidding… Sorta…

So I was sitting down with a card I bought my husband for Sweetest Day trying to think of what I wanted to write inside.  I always try to write something heartfelt and poignant for that moment in our lives so he knows I didn’t just grab random card from the shelf and throw it in the grocery cart.  I actually put love and thought into the whole action.  And I want him to know how very much I appreciate him and how truly lucky I honestly am to have him in my life.  Okay, now this is starting to sound like a greeting card.

When I thought about our move, I thought about how I had given up on my dreams that I had when I was 18/19.  When I moved to the big city of Dayton, with plans to work part time for a doctor after completing college for Medical Assisting and going back to college to obtain at least a Bachelor’s degree, maybe even go for my Ph.D.  My folly was moving with the man who would become my first husband and letting all his agendas derail my plans.  In other words, I compromised so much in that relationship just to keep someone else happy (who then repeatedly cheated on and lied to me) that I lost my dreams.

Over the years, I struggled, one bad marriage and then finally another bad married until I turned 38 and said F! This is enough of this crap.  And I changed my entire life.  Except I didn’t realize that I was too afraid to reach for my dreams.  I wanted to stay safe.  Financially safe.  Everyone experienced layoffs starting in 2009 and my current husband and I put in a plan to pay off all our debt except one vehicle payment and our mortgage.  Eventually the vehicle payment will go as well when we hopefully can just start paying cash for vehicles but that’s down the road.

We reached our initial goal and had all this money left over.  We thought whoo hoo, if something happens with one of our jobs or both of our jobs we can both work at McDonalds and pay the bills.  There is something to be said for financial freedom such as that.  It makes you feel way more secure and free.   Which was part of the reason my husband had to fight me so hard to consider going into a lot more debt on a house.   Finally we agreed that we would stay within a home price range that would allow us to meet our budget requirements on his salary.  In other words, if we couldn’t pay the bills on his take home pay, the house was too much money.

Because we had paid off so much debt, we were able to allow ourselves a handsome sum for a home or so it felt to me.  This seemed to be a reasonable compromise even though the credit union said we were approved for a mortgage double with what we ended up with.  There weren’t even very many homes for sale in that upper crust price range anyway.  Not that weren’t over 6000 sq ft and so elaborate that it made my head spin.  I’m still a simple girl and a lot of homes in that price seemed to have a lot of “look at me” features more to keep up with the Khardashians than to make your life more simple or enjoyable.  I don’t need a theatre room but I may consider the heated towel racks for my current house…

So when I was writing my message to my husband in my card, I told him thank you for making my dream come true because I was too afraid to do it.  When I wrote those words, I surprised myself because I had not really considered the fact I had been afraid.  Some of it was the financial jump but we can still pay the bills on his salary easy enough so it wasn’t really the money.  I had to face the fact that I had long ago given up on my dream of a beautiful colonial home out in the country.  I had convinced myself I no longer wanted the bigger house, telling myself it was frivolous and silly and not smart financially.  I was being smart staying put in the smaller house in town with the little mortgage and neighbors looking in my windows (well not literally, it just felt closed in).

That morning I had learned a childhood friend is facing a serious and most likely terminal illness.  We are the same age, graduated the same class.  I sat with the pen still in my hand and thought about how we never know how long we really have.  When you’re young, you think nothing can hurt you, or nothing bad can happen.  Then you get mid-life and you’re losing people you love, watching people your age die.  Death isn’t that myth anymore, it is the stark reality.  You don’t know how long you have or the people you love have on this earth.

Cancer takes so many of us every day.  It’s an epidemic, not to mention all the other tragic things that can happen.  That fairy-tale bubble seems to burst for many of us when we hit a certain age.  You wonder things like how did my grandparents handle all their friends and family dying?  Do you finally just get used to it and accept it as a fact of life?  Just embrace each day and be grateful for your blessings?  I don’t know, my grandparents have been gone for years so I can’t ask them.

As I sit here on my bed, the sun has risen and I have watched the light move across the west wall of my bedroom.  It is utterly quiet and peaceful at this moment.  Just the sound of the dryer in the other room.  I can see for miles from my second-story bedroom windows over rolling fields, woods and a quarry.  My dream actually materialized better than I had first imagined all those years ago.  The question that came to mind yesterday I wrote in the card was what other dreams have I completely repressed and pushed away?  I’m going to search this out and see if there is something else I am missing in my life that I haven’t given myself permission to pursue.

Maybe the dreams of our youth don’t really die but just sit and wait until we remember we had them.  After all, back then we were more likely to follow our hearts than make excuses why we can’t make them happen.   We were allowed to dream back then.  When you grow up, you’re expected to be responsible and make practical choices but not all dreams are “practical” or even seem “wise” or even “grow-up”.   I intend to revisit my youthful dreams.  Dig them back up and really examine them.

But this time I am going to listen to my heart rather than my head…  Happy Dreaming!

Songs and Memories, Looking Back, Looking Forward

The other day, I was going through the local drive thru to pick up a salad for my lunch and a song I hadn’t heard in many years was playing on the classic rock station in my truck.  Fly to the Angels by the 80’s/90’s hair band, Slaughter.  You know how when you hear a song, those old memories just flood back and it’s hard to get it out of your mind?  I downloaded the song and let it play at a low volume on repeat while I worked the rest of the afternoon just letting the memories and the old feelings just wash over me.

I’m not particularly nostalgic and I’m not one to live in the past but I like to analyze how I felt then and sometimes the wrong turns or seemingly wrong turns I took.  The one thing I felt was that I missed the freedom, that life felt like it held all possibilities, my wild self, the hope and endless dreams before life kicked the shit out of me.  Before I had a mortgage, kids, responsibilities outside of myself when I lived for myself.  Everything was in front of me, the tragedies of life hadn’t beat me down.  I was envious of my young self.  To feel anything is possible.

Then I thought about it for a while, what was really different?  Yes I was tied down a bit more, not as easy to just pick up and move or run away with the circus but I really have more resources than I did then.  Most anything is possible, though my age does preclude me from a few things but really only a few.  My kids are grown for the most part, I am not really taking care of someone all the time so really I’m back at square one to a point.  I’m not far from those days.  I’m a quarter century older than when I first heard that song, twenty-five years wiser and I’ve raised my family already.  Again I am almost as free as I was back then as I was living on my own, supporting myself just as I am now.  I do have a few more responsibilities, but really not many more.

It dawned on me that I am in no different place than I was when that song first became popular other than I’ve lived a chunk of my life, raised my girls and been married three times.  I’ve packed a lot of living in that quarter century but I still have all my life ahead of me, albeit a bit shorter but our life is always before us until there is no more life.  Freedom, hope, dreams are all a mindset.  As we grow older, we forget how to dream, we start being more cautious especially when we become parents.  We start having more sense, we become grown ups, adults.  Except in my heart I’m still this wild, adventurous and fearless kid.  Then I realize, I can still be that wild, adventurous and fearless kid.  But I don’t have to stop being who I am because I’m an adult.

Sometimes, we get so caught up in being spouses, partners, parents, employees, caretakers, friends and lovers that we forget to see that anything is possible, no matter how old you are.  All the time I am reading Facebook articles reposted about senior citizens performing feats like gymnastics that we assume are impossible.  If those “elderly’ people believed that they couldn’t do things because of their age, then they would never try.  How many things do we not do because we tell ourselves we can’t, we shouldn’t, or we are too old, too fat, too poor, not good enough or whatever other else we can dream up to stop us from experiencing life to  the fullest or chasing our dreams?  I know I am very guilty of this.

I almost didn’t write this blog be because I thought people would think I’m stupid but I’ve only received positive feedback so far.  Sometimes taking a risk feels like standing naked in front of a room full of people but this is also where you can find the best rewards.  And sometimes the hardest failures.  The only true failure though, is not trying at all.

It truly is all in your mind.  Everyone is going to have limitations, obstacles and challenges.  My opportunities and possibilities are endless just as they were twenty-five years ago.  It’s all in my mindset.  It’s all in how I choose to see the world.  I may be a bit more jaded, hit by life but I can still dream just as I did when I was younger.  And so what if I listen to this old song over and over, I’m using my headphones, dammit!