I’ve got chills, they’re multiplying. And I’m losing control…

That fateful hike still haunts me today. A change occurred in my body, twisting it, and for months I felt miserable. Wicked temperature swings struck me and I’d wake around 1 AM covered in sweat, my pillow damp and my sleep headphones plastered to my head. Towels on my pillow  became the only way to compensate. When out of bed I’d shiver and shake. I could never get warm, no matter what I wore. I floated through each day, a self-aware ghost unable to do much about it. My wife  draped shawls across my shoulders and forced hot tea on me throughout the day. I bought felt hats, pulling them down over peering out of the narrow gap between the two.

And the fatigue! Dear God the fatigue. I had zero energy in my body, moving from one room to the next in tiny shuffles. If it weren’t for the quick naps in my chair I’d never have completed the year. The sun going down became a ritual of counting the minutes till bed time. My sleep consisted of fitful tossing sprinkled with episodes of waking to pee and changing pillow towels.  I spent the entire holiday season moving from bed to kitchen to office to kitchen to bed day after day. My wife tells me these were frightening times for her and my son,  more so than the 2 month fever incident in 2016. Watching me become a walking wax figure must have been traumatizing. And while I was aware of the major aspects of my condition, someone sitting inside the storm doesn’t always think about intensity.

But then I lost my voice. A constant nasal drip developed, coating my throat and breaking my voice at the slightest effort. I muddled through the holidays using antihistamines and charm, but the drip wore on me. Between the voice and the foggy mind and the fatigue I became convinced I had Lewy Body. Sitting on a stool in the kitchen, leaning against my refrigerator half asleep, I mumbled a promise to my wife I’d go to my doctor first thing in January.

Thinking this was all just a weird cold I visited my ENT. He’d been the only one to find the source of that nasty fever, making him the best candidate to diagnose this one. As he poked and prodded my neck I casually mentioned the leg cramps and possible anemia. He pressed on a spot and I choked slightly. He stopped and pulled back, looking me in the eye through his lighted scope.

“Were you officially diagnosed with anemia?”

“Not yet.” I admitted.

“But the iron is helping?” he asked.

I assured him it was.

“Has anyone ever told you that you have thyroid nodules?” He went back to pressing around my neck and I mumbled negative. He suggested they must be pressing into the vocal cords. I asked if they were cancerous and he casually replied, “In 20% of men they are, yes.” I went home to ponder cancer. and he ordered an x-ray of the sinuses and an ultrasound on my thyroid. Thankfully the ultrasound showed the nodules were benign, not large enough for removal. The x-ray showed nothing wrong with my sinuses, leaving a little mystery in my life. He chalked it up to the thyroid being out of whack. He also suggested the anemia could be caused by a thyroid that wasn’t working, affecting my iron absorption.

“Come back in a year,” he said.

A year!

I left in a fog I left, but as anyone can attest you spend the first few days in a fog after getting a weird diagnosis. At least I had Doctor Google; my mom’s generation had the encyclopedia or their mother. But after some research I found thyroid cancer (which I didn’t have) is incredibly treatable, totally survivable, but can definitely kill you. And then came the next shock.

While reading about thyroid issues, I found the section on Hashimoto’s disease, otherwise known as hypothyroidism. Naturally that flowed to hyperthyroidism and graves disease. Symptom after symptom rang out like tolls on a dinner bell. For hyperthyroidism the symptoms were striking: rapid heart rate, loss of hair, sweating, cycling emotions. For hypothyroidism  you get foggy brain, temperature sensitivity, sleep disruption, slow metabolism, malabsorption issues, and wait for it…anemia. While it doesn’t cause anemia, hypothyroidism affects the metabolism and if I’m not absorbing nutrients then I can be deficient in a number of areas. 

And so I visited my GP, hoping he’d test my thyroid. I explained why I thought I had anemia and hypothyroidism and he nodded in all the right places. He replied “let’s take some blood and get to the bottom of it.” (I love my doctor!)

Less than a week later he emailed, asking me to come in. He had concerns about some numbers and wondered if maybe I was gluten sensitive. More lights going off, but again it seemed obvious. My thyroid was out of whack! All the blood numbers showed it, including almost no iron or hemoglobin in my blood. In my current state I did what anybody would do; I went full on pro-thyroid! And in doing so I had to admit some basic facts about myself. Humans are great at lying to themselves.

Lots of things can cause your thyroid to revolt, My favorite food in the world was pizza…anything bready to be honest. Looking over all the foods I ate I found them saturated with gluten and empty calories. If my body struggled with extracting nutrients from my food because it was constantly dealing with thyroid issues, then I must have seemed like a real jerk to my body. A vegetarian lifestyle combined with dieting deprived me of the iron, zinc, and nutrients I needed. And it’s probably why I have this huge neck, skin issues, even the loss of my hair. It’s why my heart fluttered and I wheezed all the time. Why it’s probably the cause of my brain fog. I wasn’t getting Lewy Body at all!

Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but at long last I’d discovered what was really wrong with me.

(Foreshadowing Alert: At this point I really should stop writing that sentence).