So You Have Hashimoto's....Now What?

I thought I would take a few moments to explain a little background history as to why I am even here starting this blog.

Almost 4 years ago, a month before my 30 birthday, I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer along with Hashimoto's and Hypothyroidism. This had been a year and a half in the making because that I had been previously diagnosed with Fibromyalgia (which I do not have) and was so sick and constantly in pain all the time. It was an uphill battle and at one point I thought I was going crazy because I had all these weird symptoms but every test that was done on me from cat scans, blood work, to colonoscopy's, all came back negative. When I was finally diagnosed with Fibromyalgia, I felt relieved in knowing that at least it was something that had a name.

Of course medication was the only cure for fibromyalgia and that created even more of a mess and I found myself addicted to pain medication which caused a million and one problems in my marriage and almost cost me my marriage! I went back to my doctor for the 1000th time to tell her we needed to try something else, that the pain medicine wasn't working as usual, that I could not function like a normal human being, and I was so close to loosing my job because most days I could not get out of bed. She looked at my blood work and noticed my thyroid levels were right on the brink of being classed has having hypothyroidism. She wanted me to have that checked again because that could be contributing to my fatigue and pain. And sure enough, it came back high and alerted her to have me go for an ultra sound where they found a nodule, which lead to a biopsy, which showed cancer, which lead to my surgery. (Thank you Jesus, I am cancer free and have been ever since)

I remember it as if it were yesterday, sitting in my Endocrinologist's office as she told me "You have Hashimoto's Thyroiditis" and what you will need to do is be on a thyroid replacement pill everyday for the rest of your lift. Now, maybe it's the fact that I am not always the brightest bulb in the box, or maybe it was because all I could do was try to wrap my brain around the fact that I had cancer, but I thought Hashimoto's was the technical term for my over active thyroid. My doctor never explained that it is an auto-immune disease that CAUSED me to have an underactive thyroid! I never looked into it, never googled it, nothing! It wasn't until a week ago that I saw the word on someone Facebook page and remembered that's what I had, and thought I would google it. Well, my jaw could have touched the floor because I was in shock and so upset! Nearly every symptom of Hashimoto's was something that for years I thought was a weird quirk I had. How could she have not told me and let me go all these years without doing anything to help me. I even made several appointments with her in the past few years about specific issues that are because of Hashimoto's and she just referred me to other doctors and answered me saying that those problems were not related to my thyroid.

It has been a lot to take in and process and I feel like all I have done is read and read and read different websites and blogs and pages where people with this auto-immune disease share what helps them, what to avoid, what doctors typically say or do, and how to start healing your body. This blog is going to be my outlet as I journey through this and figure out one day at a time how to heal from this and try to get my health back to where it should be! I am still learning!

Join me in my journey, share what has worked for you or what hasn't, or be a silent ready and hopefully gain something from my story. I haven't blogged in such a long time and it feels good to be back. Wish it were under better circumstances but for right now this is my cross and I will bear it!