What is normal anyway??

After my surgery I began to really question what being "normal" would feel like. The doctor had given me an increased dosage of synthroid but I still did not feel myself. I couldn't explain to people what I felt like and when I would say "I feel tired and like a TV that is getting good reception." People would respond Oh yeah I am tired to... Ugh!!!! I felt like saying, I know your tired but imagine running a car without the right battery, or feeling like everything is moving around you and you can't keep up.
Most of the time I let people believe that their tiredness was the same as mine, but reality was it wasn't. I was so frustrated because being at work was a struggle, getting up to go run in the morning wasn't even possible, I had difficulty concentrating at work, and often times I was just happy to make it through the day. I often reflected on what it felt like to feel "normal" or how I felt prior to having my thyroid out and slowly began to miss the butterfly in my neck that had overgrown. I felt a little empty without it. I began to wonder will I ever be "normal"???? I don't know how many times I would say that to my parents I just want to be "normal" of course they would respond with you are "normal" but I just couldn't figure out how I could be normal if I was missing a part. Well, I still don't know what "normal" is but really does anybody???

Leave my neck alone..

About 10 days after my surgery I went to follow up with my endocrinologist so he could check my TSH level and adjust my dosage of Synthroid.   Slightly before my surgery I decided to switch from the generic levothryoxine to the name brand of Synthroid in hopes of better results.      At the doctors visit the endocrinologist informed that my Parathyroid Hormone (PTH) was very elevated.  I had a PTH level of 271, which is abnormally high.... Here we go again more problems in my neck.  He tells me that I also have a little bit of a vitamin D deficiency but that the PTH level is very concerning and that maybe it's a lab error.    So off I go to  the labs.   
Soon after I go back to my endocrinologist only to find out that my PTH is now at 311, and that I may have a tumor on my parathyroid gland and that I may need surgery... WHAT!!!!!   You just had someone cut into my neck, leave a scar and now you are telling me there is something else wrong..   

So off I went for more test, another doctor, and the fear of having to go to MD Anderson cancer center for more test.   
But wait...  I am not going to let these people cut into my neck without solid evidence.. So my researching adventure began.. and the waiting game began, and the praying began.

Goodbye Thyroid

After many years of getting ultrasounds, and bloodwork and increasing dosages of levothyroixine ... I had to say goodbye to my Thyroid.  On August 30, of 2010 I went to my endocrinologist and he informed me that because my nodules had continued to grow and because my thyroid continued to grow I would need to have it removed.    Oh no.!!!!!!  This is not what I wanted to hear, I had been praying for years and years that I would not get to that point; after all my thyroid had become someting I thought about on a daily basis. Every morning after taking my medicine I would think about it..  I had a very difficult time with the idea of losing my thyroid.   But off I went to the ENT and after her feeling my neck and telling me that I had a large goiter and that she too felt was best I get it removed, I knew it was time to say goodbye.    I didn't want to say goodbye and I had lots of questions (Was I going to gain weight?,  Was I going to have the energy to run?, Would my voice be the same?, What about the scar on my neck?) but of course everyone had different answers to my questions.  Some where good and some where not so good.    

It was time to weigh my options do I keep this gland that may continue to grow and eventually cause problems with eating and breathing, or do I remove it.   Of course everyone had their opinions and I just kept hoping that I would wake up and my thyroid would have miraculously shrunk but it didn't so off I went to surgery.  

I had to say goodbye to the butterfly in my neck, the thing that had become my friend, the friend that I would think about every morning. The tiny little gland;well except in my case the big overgrown gland that was allowing me to get up and run in the morning and would work as hard as it could so I could run and go to work, even though it was hanging by a thread.. I knew in someway I was going to miss it.

On September 30, 2010 I had my thyroid removed and the road to recovery began.