That being said, my lack of new posts isn't due to the fact that I don't care about thyroid health anymore. On the contrary, I've been fighting a completely different thyroid battle than you'd normally expect.
I was battling for my child's thyroid health.
If I were to go back and pinpoint the date in which this story begins with my child...well, it'd be her entire life story. I can see back, now, certain events and reactions that make complete sense now. I realized what the problem was because of a certain series of events that I will now share.
Once a month, I visit my thyroid doctor. It's been an overly stressful school year, so I know I was addressing that at each appointment. He's a wonderful doctor with excellent bedside manner. Anyone with a malfunctioning thyroid knows full-well that the thyroid gland does not handle stress well. Shoot, running is considered stress. A wonky thyroid's reaction is to stress are troubles like gain weight, ravenous hungry from running a block or two (no joke) or ridiculously exhausted (or all three). I digress, but those are some issues we discuss, naturally.
Apparently, I was bringing up my 10 year old quite often during our monthly rendezvous. I share how the meals I mass-produced each weekend had to be tripled because two of my children gladly took the meals as their school lunches. I could tell it helped curb some of the emotional outbursts I saw with this one child of mine. It was this past March's appointment when his bald head went from writing in my medical folder to looking at me with his gentle eyes as if he had a sudden epiphany.
"She has the same food sensitivities as you do? Wheat? Sugar?" he asked. I reiterated that the diet I follow has improved her anxiety and behavioral outbursts - the very behaviors the school psychologist diagnosed as ADHD. My doctor continued, asking, "Is she prepubescent?" Yes, she shows those signs as well (how cruel our world of hormone additives are on our children's bodies! She's 10!).
His reply was, "Any child you have has a 90% change of dealing with a thyroid issue at some point in their life. It sounds as if your daughter may be having some trouble with her thyroid."
That did it. I was properly schooled. I had the answer I've been needing to a question I didn't know I needed to ask: Does my child have a thyroid problem?
Does my child have a thyroid problem?
Beyond being the most significant epiphany I could have regarding my child, my doctor wasn't done with his lesson yet. He wrote down on a prescription slip - with his name on it, mind you - the very formula that figures out reverse T3. He says, "Take this to her pediatrician. I wrote down the formula and make sure it's that test."
I recognize that formula because that's how you locate my thyroid malfunction. My liver over-produces reverse T3. Whatever little guys in thyroid headquarters send out jobs to the rest of my body, they send the wrong job orders to my liver. My liver thinks my blood has pooling amount of T3, so it's doing what it should in that situation by sending out reverse T3 to counter-act it. It debilitates me, gives me daily pain, ridiculous fatigue, vertigo, weight gain (no matter how much I diet), passing out after aerobic exercise like zumba (every time), and hypoglycemia (to name a few).
My body does not produce excessive amounts of T3, so if a doctor runs traditional thyroid tests, my T3 levels are always in range. However, my liver and thyroid are playing this lovely game and I don't appreciate it. My doctor and I have this fantastic formula for my health and we're keeping it that way. In fact, this spring I did blood work to see if my reverse T3 levels were alright. When the nurse called with the results (it was a recording), the stated, "It's in range, but it's on the low side. It's okay unless you're feeling fatigued." Funny, in the week or so prior, I had been getting more and more exhausted and I was just thinking I needed a day off to sleep and recuperate. No, it was my thyroid putting me in shut-down mode like it likes to do.
So, I take this prescription slip to the pediatrician. An intern walks in and I can see I have this poor guy quite flummoxed, but he's listening to me. He says, "It sounds like anxiety." I explain that when my thyroid was misbehaving and I had no meds and no diagnosis, I had anxiety so badly that I was on prescription meds to control it. I didn't stop flummoxing the poor young man. When I explained that my untreated thyroid gives me hypoglycemia, vertigo, depression, and anxiety, he would say "Hypoglycemia isn't a thyroid symptom," or "Vertigo isn't a thyroid symptom." In all honesty, he wasn't saying it as if he was discrediting me. He was incredulously believing every word, but he was there to give me a solution and he was lost.
I still feel sorry for the intern because he was barely learning the fine art of dealing with patients, and here I am...playing hard ball. I countered every remark he made. I was quoting books - books written by reputable doctors on the subject. Bet me that hypoglycemia and vertigo aren't symptoms. They're some of mine. I have a ridiculously long list of symptoms.
The intern didn't discredit me, but he did what he should do. He went for the general practitioner whose name is on the sign outside the office. This is where things went left. The following happened:
- That doctor said she does not have thyroid symptoms to indicate thyroid issue.
- She does not have anxiety. She has ADHD (and he started to hangle with me about not increasing her dose. I explained I didn't want an increase in ADHD prescription dosage; there is something else affecting my child).
- He strongly suggested that what she really needed was to see a psychiatrist on a regular basis.
- He agreed to run the thyroid test and he wrote down the blood work from the prescription slip my thyroid doctor gave me to hand him. My daughter had the blood work done that day.
- When the nurse called about the results, I was told, "She has no thyroid issue. We ruled out one thing!"
- I asked my husband to pick up the lab results so I could see them myself. The reverse T3 lab work I requested? It wasn't on there, just the traditional TSH and T3, and T4.
I felt lost. I had researched childhood thyroid issues and she exhibited countless symptoms! I shared this information with her teachers and they agreed. One told me, "I'm so glad she's your child. If she were mind, I'd have no clue to look at thyroid. You found it. You'll be able to help her, girl!"
But, that doctor's appointment was a bust. I didn't get help for my daughter. I heard several statements I had heard over the course of my own Alice in Wonderland search before finding a doctor who'd diagnose my health issues and save my life. The one statement by a medical professional (in this case, I use that term lightly) that sent me over edge (and into researching for my own well-being) was, "You just need to see a psychiatrist for depression." It was the catalyst I had needed to be the hero to my own story. Hearing it again with regards to my child? I'm not that kind of mom who'll say, "Oh, you just have to deal with the cards life dealt you, my child." Oh, no, I strapped some gloves on. I wasn't done with this fight.
I took the lab results to my thyroid doc during my April appointment. When I broached the topic of the unsuccessful and thoroughly depressing manner in which my child wasn't properly tested and, therefore, helped, that doctor of mine took the lab results I had brought with me. He looked at my daughter's lab results and he saw something in there. He didn't have to. She's not his patient. He's an OBGYN and she's too young to see him...but he looked at her blood work results anyway. There he goes again, healing another soul (I admire this doctor so much; he is my hero).
"In my history as a medical doctor, women who are having miscarriages have a TSH level between 2.4 and 2.9," and he's pointing to my daughter's TSH levels. It was 2.4. "Her levels are within this range and I've never seen that have good results in my patience. That illustrious healer suggested, "You could give her a thyroid supplement. Do a trial run for 2 to 3 months and see how it goes. It won't hurt her if it doesn't help."
What's the supplement he suggested? The one I take. The one I already had stored in my home. The secret was in my home the entire time and I didn't know it?
What's that supplement? ThyroCare
The results? Well, let's start with how my daughter suddenly didn't complain about concentration problems anymore. Mind you, I was one of the teachers she rotated through, so I witnessed her behavior every day. She'd shush the other students and I'd witness that they weren't being disruptive or noisy in the slightest, and yet she was highly frustrated with concentrating on her work. She was being disruptive with her complaints and demands for everyone to be quiet, if anything. Suddenly, she was calmly getting her work done and not upset about concentration troubles.
Let's talk about grades because within the first five school days of taking ThyroCare instead of ADHD medicine, she had made two 100s on two Reading tests. In fact, she made a 100 on a novel test (The Boundless) that none of the GT students made a 100 on. My child - in a day or two after taking this supplement - was performing academically better? No, not just better, in a superior fashion compared to other students.
Her behavior was remarkably better. Those moments where her anxiety was off the charts and she couldn't hear you (or your solution) through the scene she was making...she was pausing, listening, and calmly responding to the situation. Her emotions no longer control her. She controlled them.
We still control her diet because it has an affect on her behaviors and emotional well-being. Her reactions to every situation have calmed down significantly. Family members who haven't seen us in awhile will sit back and quietly tell me, "I've noticed your daughter is so much more calmer than before." I'll look at them and they'll smile, knowing how much of a trial it's been all these years. They genuinely love seeing this situation so incredibly improved. With one supplement.
Before, there were so many emotional outbursts that she had begun to say horrible things like, "I wish I was a better daughter," and, "I wish I were dead." She'd be crying and inconsolable in these moments....and they are now a chapter in our life we have closed. We're in a new chapter, one of thyroid balance, emotional balance, and...simply, healthier in every way.
The Fairy Tale Ending
Now, the story isn't quite over yet. I have a fairy tale ending for you, though it's non-fiction. I happened upon a pediatrician who knows about thyroid health in children. He's new to the area and, in the very first appointment, I trepidatiously told him my thyroid theory for my child, my conversation with my thyroid doctor, the debacle with the former pediatrician, and our family history. This doctor's first response was, "Whenever I hear a child has been diagnosed ADHD/ADD, the first thing I do is run blood work because something else often triggers the behaviors. I already run three thyroid tests in the blood work I request in this situations, but because of your family history, I will add two more."
He included the reverse T3 test.
When we saw him at the follow-up appointment this summer, he shared with me that my daughter's TSH was spiking and her reverse T3 was low. In the most recent thyroid research that he's been reading, TSH spikes before hypothyroidism sets in. His diagnosis is that she will one day be hypothyroid and it'd be best if we run these thyroid tests annually if not biannually. He handed me a copy of the blood work knowing I keep documents like that in a folder.
My response was, "Where have you been?" This man just barely started his practice and his front lobby was empty the entire time I filled out my children's documents. He even thanked me for choosing his services, quite grateful for the clients - his practice is that new. I continued on, "How do you know these things? Yes, I know them because I read about thyroid health, but it's so rare to find a doctor who knows it. How do you know these things?"
His response was beautiful, "I believe that no matter what station you are at in life, you must always be the very best version of it."
Thus, my fairy tale ends with an actual solution for my child who has been struggling for years. Life has recently calmed down and the daily emotional outbursts and meltdowns (and my skyrocketing stress levels dealing with them) have disappeared altogether. It's why you are seeing a new post written as of today. I have some of my life happily returned to me. I hope someone out there in this world, someone who needs this, will get this information and not give up hope for themselves or their child. I hope they have the strength to fire a doctor, or a few doctors, until they find one who is a gifted healer (not just a person who completed the required degrees and tests). May you find the help you seek.
~Rebecca
