Look Around, Leaves Are Brown, There's a Patch of Snow on the Ground

 

Well, kids. It's been a rough Winter for me. Not that everything has been bad. I got to take my baby girl to Chicago for a long weekend to celebrate her getting a job after she graduated from her surgical technician program, and that was amazing and fun.

It's mostly everything associated with my Hyperthyroidism/Grave's Disease that's been doing me in. Of course the thyroid is a hormone so when it's messed up, it f*cks with all kinds of weird things in my body...Most importantly emotions and energy levels. And no older person needs help messing with those things.

I am taking Methimazole to calm down my thyroid. Like I've said before, that medicine has a lot of side effects. The ones that are bothering me the most are the headaches, which on me are migraines, muscle and joint pain, digestive issues, and weight gain. Sounds like a blast, right? Luckily, some of those side effects lessen as your body gets used to being on the drugs. And since my hyperthyroidism was so bad, they gave me a large dose of these drugs every month. At my last appointment a week or so ago, they checked my levels, and my meds have worked so well that I am now HypOthyroid, which means I am super lethargic, I have mild depression instead of anxiety, Oh, and even more of the weight gain that seemingly never ends. 

I also forgot to tell you that my meds lower my immune system. I do try to be careful and wear a mask when I'm in large groups of people, but sometimes I forget, or get tired of it, and go someplace and don't wear one, but I finally got sick this past week, and it was a doozy. I had this weird cold thing that turned into a stomach flu and I was tired and dizzy and watched a lot of bad TV. I started feeling a little better today, so I'm hoping I'm on the upswing.

I know I am whining a LOT right now, but the good news is that my doctor decreased my dose by half, so in the next month or two, I should hopefully start seeing a decrease in the lethargy, depression, and even my weight gain is supposed to calm down. I can't even  imagine how lovely that will all be.

Don't worry, I'm still trying to get some exercise in, which is normally how I deal with any physical/mental/emotional issue I have, but the weird joint and muscle pain thing that my meds do is no joke...Okay, it can seem kind of funny in that old-people-falling-apart way, that those of us of a certain age can either laugh or cry at...Or laugh until we cry, which is what I like to do.

Anyway, here is an example of what I'm talking about:

When we were in Chicago we went to the immersive Van Gogh exhibit (which was amazing and I highly recommend it). We checked out the gift shop ahead of time, and they still had some merch left from the Frida Kahlo immersive experience and it was on sale, so I thought, "What the hell, I should get the 1,000 piece Frida Kahlo jigsaw puzzle". I totally forgot why it's a bad idea for me to buy jigsaw puzzles, and that is because my stupid ADHD can make me hyper-focused (read: obsessed) about completing puzzles, and it can take away from literally anything else I should be doing. Who needs to eat? Sleep? What's that? I can put in my own catheter, don't you think? No? Maybe a chamber pot?

So, I start working on this stupid puzzle, and I have kind of a shallow table I use to put puzzles together, and spend almost an entire day one day working on it, and because of the weird position I was in for most of that day, I wake up the next morning and my hip is all different kinds of messed-up. Seriously. Shit. That was about a month ago, and it's still not back to be 100%. It's a hell of a lot better, and almost where it should be, but man is it embarrassing telling people how I hurt my hip - vigorous jigsaw puzzling? Egad! I guess it's an answer to one of those, "tell people you're old without actually saying you're old" things. I could barely walk for a few weeks because I hurt my hip putting together a jigsaw puzzle. No matter how many ways I say it, it's still embarrassing.

 Okay, so the deal is, it's been a rough Winter physically, mentally, emotionally, and as far as my pride is concerned, BUT it is almost March, which means warmer weather (at least by May in Iowa, but SOOO close), my body is slowly but surely getting used to the side effects of my meds, and anyway My doctor decreased my dose by half, so hopefully all of this stupid disease shit should eventually get better and better. HOPEFULLY.

Now, I just have to figure out a way to get the cats to give me my reading chair back that I recently bought to escape into books on all of these bad days I've been having. I can't blame them for hogging that chair, it's soft, and velvety, and best of all, it swivels!