*** This blog is not to be prescriptive nor give you advice, merely to show you my way of navigating true health in a jungle of advice and pharmaceutical pressure. Please do your own research, ask your own specialists or contact those I have used if you wish to find out more about your personal condition and symptoms. To your very best health. ***
I’ve been in denial.
Last May (2017) I was diagnosed, by chance, with a low functioning thyroid condition.
I’d not gone looking for the diagnosis.
I’d not felt that anything was wrong with me.
Food wise, I was the best I’d ever been. I’d been alcohol and sugar free for 6 months. I ate two good homemade meals a day the included a lot of salads and vegetables and I was gluten free, as I’d already been for some years.
I dismissed it as a blip, a mistake and something that I could sort out in a week or so.
It wasn’t to be.
I thought I should pop along to the GP and check the blood test results and discuss a health and lifestyle approach to sorting this out and after his opening line of “there’s nothing nutritionally you can do to fix this” I kept my mouth shut, took his prescription for Thyroxine and walked out his office silently vowing to never take the damn things.
For someone unknown reason, perhaps it’s a learned behaviour, I had a prescription in my hand, and I went and got the tablets straight away. I knew I wouldn’t take them. But I went nonetheless, couldn’t read the form and had to buy reading glasses at the same time and vowed I’d never wear those either.
I wasn’t going to be medicated. I wasn’t short sighted. I wasn’t going to have any of this stuff happen to me!
I went home, put the tablets in the cupboard and left them there.
I don’t know what I expected to happen. Some miracle cure. Someone telling me it had all been a terrible mistake or an announcement that I was now OK. None of this happened and after realising that this is a familial issue with my mum living with hypothyroidism, I decided to talk to a nutritionist about it.
I knew Laura De La Harpe through my networking links and spoke to her about it. She did a thorough test on my reflexes, my metabolism and my thyroid and concluded that I was indeed hypothyroid, my metabolism was running between 350-500 calories a day slower than expected and it would be worthwhile ruling out if I had the auto-immune disease Hashimoto’s.
I agreed, but considered this to be a fruitless exercise in that I wasn’t going to have that. This was all a big hoo-haa.
The test was done via an online service and was to cost £69. I hummed and hawed and went on holiday and eventually got the kit sent to me in September 2017.
The process was simple.
Prick your finger and squeeze out enough blood to fill a tiny vial.
It took me soooooooo long to squeeze the blood out I could see the blood congealing in the tube as I massaged and pleaded with my finger to give up it’s redness.
By the time I had filled the vial it had taken 45 minutes. My finger was sore. The blood was no longer fresh and I just knew that the results would be compromised.
However I duly sent them off in the pre-paid box and waited for the results.
They didn’t come.
I chased them.
Some time after the expected date there was some comments from the company saying that there were no results and could I do it again. They sent me a new kit (no charge) and I pondered on going through the motions of blood taking again.
Given that it took so – damn – long, to get the blood the first time I decided to massage my poor finger whilst trying to work at my desk. I set myself up and prepared for the 45 minutes of waiting.
Oh good God! This time, my finger was pumping blood everywhere! I had it on my desk, on tissues, thankfully in the vial and within 2 minutes the job was done!
By the time the results came back some 7 days later I was past caring.
When they did though I was stunned.
Range between which antibodies need to be 0-34.
My reading 251.
F**k it. This was now real.
