Learning to Listen to My Body

For about 3 weeks I’ve not been feeling too good.  Not really sick, but not ‘me’.  I kept making excuses.  Getting used to going to the gym, allergies, didn’t sleep well, too much on my mind.

Then yesterday I called my endo’s nurse and requested they change the blood work from Quest to Lab Express.  LE is right next door and the vampire is awesome at finding my veins.  Quest is always busy and the phlebotomists always start with I have deep veins.  So in case they do miss, they’ve already put that excuse out there.

Anyway, the nurse said no problem and I mentioned to her that I thought my levo would probably get increased because I’m not very energetic, I haven’t lost weight since the surgery, and I’m still losing a lot of hair.  She said to get my test done immediately.

Today I went and visited the vampire at 8 ish.  2 tubes and as I’m pulling into my driveway, endo nurse calls.  My results were back already and they were not good.

TSH is at 7.6 something.  I sorta went foggy after the 7.  (4.0 is the high end of normal.). My levo is being increased, I’ll pick that script up tomorrow.  My free T4 - I have no idea.  She’s mailing me my results.

The rest of the call consisted of me beating myself up for not calling or emailing them earlier to let them know I wasn’t feeling the way I thought I should.  But I didn’t want to be whiny and then find out it’s all in my head.  She told me I need to tell them all of it.  Email is easy because I can do that any time.  And I know that - that’s what’s so stupid about this.  My endo is awesome.  She calls on her days off.

The nurse told me that even if my blood work came back normal, if I’m not feeling ‘well’, Dr. Thomas would increase the levo slightly to get me more towards the middle or lower edge of normal.

So lesson learned.  I’ll still be weighing myself at least once a day.  Blood work will get drawn again in 2 months - unless I call or email before then letting them know I feel like shit still.

I’ve even told people getting the meds right is a lot like meds for depression.  The advantage I have is there are only 2 meds that are out there for this - Levothyroxin and Armour.

The hard part is that I’m not visibly sick.  So it’s real hard to tell my boss that I’m needing to go home.  I haven’t done that yet, but there’s been times where I’ve wanted to.

I’ve decided no gym this week.  That’ll give me time to get used to the new dosage.  Monday I’ll start back up again.  :-)