What Grave's Was Like For Me

I've always wanted to document my whole Grave's situation. What is was like, what my experience was and where I'm at now. I had pushed it to the side because I had some time to feel like a normal person again but since I've been feeling not so great the past few weeks ( it would have to start AFTER my dr's apt) it's brought it all to the surface again and I feel like spewing about it. ( the pics above are me pre graves with Isabelle, then pregnant with Christian where I look like death, then shortly after my RAI treatment with my thyroid still raging, I can a see difference can you??)

First of all, once you have Grave's you always have it. Check out more info here.

When this all started is slightly sketchy. We are not sure if it started before I got pregnant with Christian or if the pregnancy triggered it. I remember starting to feel tired and I quit exercising prior to the pregnancy. I also remember going from 124lbs to 121 lbs, yet my wedding ring got tight. Was this my thyroid? I'll never know. My first symptoms that made me think what is wrong with me was at the beginning of the pregnancy 6 weeks maybe I started to feel really tired, my legs trembled going upstairs, I drank almost a gallon a water a day. My hands trembled. The laundry piled up on the steps, to the point that MITCH started doing laundry and Linda would do some when she came over. I called the dr's office at around 13 weeks pregnant because neither one of our mother's thought it was normal for me to be this tired. I described my symptoms, tired, legs fatigued, shaky hands enough that my best friend and husband noticed and drinking so much water. I told her I wondered if something was wrong with my thyroid since my mom had a low thyroid in highschool and my aunt had it during one pregnancy. The nurse was very nice, she said it could be that just the pregnancy and having an 17 month old was just tiring me out. She said we can test your thyroid but if it comes back abnormal it may not be till after 16 weeks. Because you make more thyroid hormone at the beginning of pregnancy for the baby as the baby's thyroid is not functioning yet so it could appear to hyper thyroid but not really. This reason I learned through my own research. So I went on my merry way and around 16 weeks I thought maybe I was starting to feel slightly less tired so I kept on and we headed to KS for thanksgiving 2005. At this point I was 18 weeks. My parents were concerned and my aunt Diane noticed my eyes like they did. My parents talked to my cousin who is a nurse. I did not look good out of my eyes but they didn't want to worry me. It was mild weather and I remember just burning up in my sweater that day. For a while I had grown increasingly irritable and ANGRY. I would get enraged at Isabelle, I remember laying on the floor crying pleading with her to just obey. (something 1.5 year olds are so good at :))We went back home and I was excited to find out what our baby was, I had felt from the beginning that it was a boy, so did my mom and best friend. At the ultrasound the tech noticed that Christian's heartrate would go up and down, 150, 183, 215bpm. The doctor said she wanted to check my thyroid and see if that was the cause of the tachycardia. The tests came back and my TSH was undetectable. Hyperthyroid and very much so. Next came a very low dose of PTU. very low, my TSH did not improve but the dr said my t4 came down a tiny bit, enough to lower Christian's heartrate. Meanwhile my blood pressure was around 148/98 with a pulse rate of 136 bpm. The average person's heartrate is 60-80. A blood test confirmed I had Grave's Disease. Normally I would've gone through the tests and treatment to get it taken care of but since I was pregnant I had to wait and I couldn't take enough meds to bring my levels back to normal since it crosses the placenta and they didn't Christian's thyroid being affected. I had multiple ultrasounds to check him and they also once checked to make sure he did not have goiter. So my life was an exhausting existence. We ate out all the time, months would go by and I wouldn't do the budget or balance the checkbook, I couldn't, I so beat. I would yell at Isabelle, get angry at everybody. Then feel like a jerk for being that way. I went around hot, sweaty, shaking hands, legs, bug eyed. My eyes hurt so bad in the mornings and I wore sunglasses even when it was cloudy. I felt ugly and self conscious for so many reasons, I felt like my body was neutral yet flooring the gas petal at the same time, my mind was scattered and I felt shaky on the inside too, almost like I was observing myself. I felt misunderstood, I felt like nobody except for my mom and Mitch really understood that was freaking SICK. I couldn't function like a normal person at any capacity. I remember getting ready to go grocery shopping with Mitch and the getting ready alone wiped me out and I would lay down on the couch and sleep and he would end up going himself. ( I remember I couldn't stand doing my eye makeup because I just wanted to scream just something about it seemed tediously torturous and I wanted to jump out of my skin, weird yes) That man did so much during that time, taking care of a kid, cooking, or buying food :) etc; I felt like a worthless wife and mother. My biggest regret is not drawing upon the strength of the Lord as I should have but being so exhausted physically and mentally made that hard to do, not impossible though and I wonder how many blessings I missed out if I would've turned more to the Lord during this time than I did. It's all for my learning though and before I was a, get it together, shape up or ship out person. I didn't have a lot of compassion, I was very black and white. Then I fell hard, so there have been some beautiful things that sprang up out of this thorny mess. Things I prided myself on whether I wanted to admit or not, having my ducks in a row, having a good memory, having self control, looks, were stripped from me at that point and haven't all and may never will be fully back. I learned a lot about how much I took credit for what I had. So all of this babbling is therapeutic and yet I haven't even told my whole story...

So I continued throughout the pregnancy,weak, hot, frizzy-haired, wild eyed, angry and scattered, feeling like someone else.

I've always wanted to list all of my symptoms so here's break to enjoy the list... haha.

Recessed eyelids, dry eyes, bug eyed look.

Hot, sweaty in the Iowa winter.

Thirsty and Hungry

BM's 2-3 times a day.

Insomnia

Splitting nails and swollen fingers,

Frizzy dry hair and tons of it in the shower.

Shaky hands, I found a father's day card to Mitch after Christian was born the handwriting is so bad

Weak thigh muscles

Enlarged thyroid

IRRITABLE

high heart rate and blood pressure

exhaustion

trouble concentrating

horrible memory

messed up you know what drive (sad but true it's a effected by the thyroid too)

Back to my Audrey grave's saga:

37 weeks pregnant rolled around. The night before I went into labor was scraping drywall mud off the bottom of the downstairs shower, Mitch had been doing some household projects here and there. Mom would be coming to stay after the baby was born and I knew I needed to get that bathroom and downstairs ready for her. I was so tired I remember thinking, well if this doesn't send me into labor, nothing will. I never expected it to as Isabelle was 4 days late. I didn't know that my thyroid problems put me at risk for miscarriage, preterm labor and a small baby. You have to educate yourself I'm finding out. That night I woke up in th emiddle of the night, feeling gross and I couldn't sleep, I got up and took a bath and I was worried I was in labor, I didn't want to go in the middle of the night. The feeling subsided and I was able to sleep later. The next mornign around 11 am I lost my mucous plug and contractions remained steady. Christian was born around 4 am the next day. He would've come sooner but I waited for 3 hrs to be checked as they wanted to make sure I was not having preeclampsia. Then I had to walk to make sure I was progressing to even be admitted and have my water broke... so we got there at 7pm and I was walking at midnight, water broke around 2:30 am. And I had really hoped this time not to have missed a whole night of sleep the same as with Isabelle...so Christian is born at 37 weeks, techinically I was 37 weeks and 3 days but the nurse said she was putting him down as 37, she thought he was just barely 37 weeks. He was 6lb 1.5 oz and was 18.75 inches long. And healthy. He was out with 4 pushes and the Lord was so gracious and I only had a 1st degree tear and healing was much easier than with Isabelle.

So this concludes my part one of my grave's story. The next part will be my treatment begins and so does my new dr's office screwing up along the way.

random info. In 2004 my uncle philip also developed Grave's disease and had the RAI treatment. And after I was diagnosed with my disease my Dad found out he had Hashimoto's Disease, another kind of thyroid disorder. My aunt Denise has a low thyroid and their mother had a goiter, so it's in our family.