Thursday, October 7, 2010

Allergies, Food Intolerances or Thyroid??? That is the Question....

Well, I have just ended round #1 of the liothyronine (natural T3, T4) medication.  I can tell it too.  My symptoms came back full force, raging,  before I was even off the medication but at a very low dose.  It really is not very fun.  For instance, today:  My usual day runs -  Up at 4:00 a.m.,  cook breakfast and pack a lunch for hubby; have my quiet time, breakfast, wait for the children (now one child) to get up and start our home schooling day.   Priorities are set. Whatever needs to be done in the way of housework gets done and so on and so forth goes our day.  I have been doing this for ten years...Before that, it was get up at 3:00 a.m., go to work, hubby wakes up; I stop work, fix his breakfast, get him out the door, get child number one up, fix her breakfast and out the door to school, go back to work and wait for child two to wake up.  Child two wakes up and then I stop work for the day so I can spend time with him...That was my life for ten years before the last eleven years which is how many years I have been home schooling. 

Why is this topic under  "He's Married to a Multi-Sensitivity Chemical Allergic Type Person"... you ask...Well.  I wanted you to know I don't and never did just sit around at home doing nothing.  So many times in my life I have heard, you need to get up and be more active.  Come to find out, there is a reason I am always so tired, always in so much pain, always why the back is hurting and I have muscle aches and pains that never go away so  much so that if I do something major say like gardening, it takes me two or three days to get over that one day of gardening.  I have what is known as Wilson's Thyroid Syndrome.  I run a low body temperature and because of it, it affects my thyroid gland. 

Within the last, I don't know, four or five years, maybe even six or seven...I have had escalating symptoms.  I had a leg rash that would not go away.  I became allergic to my allergies...hay fever symptoms multiplied...asthma flaring all the time, chronic fatigue, muscle aches and pains, a back that was out more than it was in, headaches,... just a miserable person.  Well, I finally went to the naturopath because all the medical doctors just kept wanting to give me Prednisone but could never give me an answer for what "it" was.  I'm a person who does not like to take medicine if I can help it especially medicine that has really bad side effects.  So I was tested for food intolerances and yes, I have some.  I changed my diet.  It helped.  But then I started getting more scary symptoms....

This morning, for example, I had to have a nap at 9:30 a.m.  ??? A Nap???  Seriously, that early in the day....So then I have this weird feeling going along with it.  My head feels all numb, kind of a half asleep feeling you know pins and needles...and my tongue feels like it is drawing up to the roof of my mouth....The funny thing was that I was doing this before I started the thyroid medication and after starting the medication all these symptoms went away.  The flashy lights in my peripheral vision, this weird feeling and the passing out because when I get this way, I'm going out whether I chose to or not.  If I sit in a chair, I'll just fall asleep.  Ask me how I know...And it is not like a fall asleep/wake up feeling.  It is a 'your out and down for the count' feeling.  I know because my children have awakened me and although I was awake, I had to struggle to 'wake up'.  So it is either one of two things....the sour cream I ate at breakfast or the thyroid issue....Yes, there are things in certain foods that knock me out such as I described.   So I have a new brand of sour cream and I need to figure out if it was the sour cream or the medicine.  Although the symptoms kind of all went away while I was at a higher dose of medication.  But maybe it was a fluke and it is the sour cream....see how dodgy life gets with a multi-sensitive chemical disorder person.  You can go here and read how certain food chemicals have affected others....MSG-Myth    And just try to find a doctor who understands this....I have yet to find someone on my insurance plan...the naturopath is another who does but no coverage on my insurance for them. 

Anyhow, I'm waiting to start round #2 of my medication which I will be doing in the next day or so...They hope they can jump-start my thyroid gland  to working properly.  But it appears that all of the above symptoms mentioned, the many more that are listed with thyroid issues and many more that I have that I didn't list, all go away when I am on the medication.  My husband even commented on the Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde personna that I seem to have developed which makes me sad.  I certainly didn't mean for my family to have to suffer and then to be told for so many years, "It's all in your head."  Yeah, riiggghtt, Doc...!  Thanks a lot....

Anyhow, not to focus on negatives, I am just trying to state that I have been through quite a bit and I can tell the good days from the bad.  I know what it feels like now to feel good and I want that all the time.  I'm tired of feeling bad.  I have had many, many years of feeling bad.  My children have had to deal with 'sick mom' all their life.  My husband has had to deal with 'sick wife' all of our 21 years of marriage.  I am a little bit mad that these things were stolen from me.  I thank the Lord, He is restoring my health to me by allowing me to find these things that are working. 

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