In 2020, every single lymph node in my body swelled up and just…stayed there. Like uninvited houseguests who don’t read the room. My doctor poked around, ran labs, ruled out mono, scratched his head, and said (I am paraphrasing) “something is off with your thyroid, go see someone else.”
Cool. Great. Love that for me.
And so began what I can only describe as the world’s least fun world tour: The Year of a Thousand Doctors.
First stop: Hashimoto’s disease. A thyroid condition where your immune system decides your own body is the enemy. They put me on Synthroid to level out my TSH levels and give me some energy back, and I thought, great, finally, a plan.
Reader, there was not a plan. There was chaos.
Within weeks I was running around like I had personally chugged fourteen espressos and then sprinted through a tornado. My resting heart rate was 165 bpm…sitting down. Over 200 when I moved. Turns out, I also had Graves’ disease, an entirely separate thyroid condition pulling in the opposite direction, and the Synthroid had essentially hit the gas pedal on my hyperthyroidism. Fantastic.
Next we tried Methimazole to pull things back. Within a month, it was causing liver toxicity. A rare side effect, yes, but a side effect I was personally experiencing. Because of course.
The whole time, doctors kept recommending I destroy my thyroid with radioactive iodine. I kept nodding politely and then going home and reading every medical journal I could find. I have a nodule on my thyroid and cancer runs deep in my family. Radioactive iodine was not going to be my answer. I knew it in my bones.
Here’s what the medical journals don’t cover: the look on your kids’ faces when mom can’t get off the couch. Again.
At the time, my kids were 7 and 4. When I was in a hypothyroid episode, I literally could not get out of bed to play with them. I wasn’t allowed to do more than walk because my heart rate was so dangerously high that I carried emergency propranolol in my purse like it was chapstick.
I was so done. So, so done. Over the doctors, over the diagnosis’ with no solutions.
In 2021, I found an endocrinologist who actually listened. Like, sat there and listened. I had already made up my mind: I wanted my thyroid surgically removed. I came in with my research, my questions, and zero interest in being talked out of it. She looked at me and said, “You’ve already made up your mind, and that makes it easy for me to say yes.” I asked approximately 938,756,384 more questions anyway. I found a surgeon right here in Pensacola who would do it, and I was scheduled within a week.
Everyone around me was worried about the scar on my neck. Sweet, truly. But I was ready to look like Frankenstein if it meant I could feel like a human being again. Scars heal. I was tired of just surviving.
I was simultaneously the most relieved and the most terrified I have ever been in my life. The risks were real: permanent voice damage (I lost my voice for two weeks), a neck hematoma (it didn’t), and hypocalcemia (it did).
My parathyroids didn’t survive the surgery. You only need two to process calcium efficiently. I have one still technically on payroll, but she only clocks in when she feels like it. So now I take heavy-duty calcium supplements every day for the rest of my life, along with synthetic thyroid hormones, and a handful of other vitamins for more than just the vibes. Oh, and that nodule they weren’t sure about? Precancerous. Somehow that made every hard decision feel right.
And I would do it all again.
Every wrong diagnosis. Every medication that backfired. Every specialist who shrugged and sent me somewhere else. Every night I lay in bed wondering if I would ever feel like myself again.
Because on the other side of all of it was me.
A mom who loves fiercely. A mom who can wrestle with her preteen son, for now anyway (I am fully aware that window is closing fast). A mom who can sign up for school color runs with her daughter and actually show up out of breath, covered in chalk dust and completely present. A mom who can juggle a million tasks as an independent contractor in marketing and watch her career finally, gloriously take off. For a long time, going back to work wasn’t even on the table.
On the other side was a person who gained patience she didn’t know she had. Confidence that only comes from being knocked flat and choosing to get back up anyway. A persistence that no doctor’s waiting room could ever fully extinguish. And lastly, a sense of humor that got sharper the harder things got. It turns out trauma is excellent comedy material, eventually anyway.
If your body is telling you something is wrong, it is not lying. You are not dramatic. You are not weak. You are not “just anxious.” You are a person who deserves a doctor who listens, answers that make sense and a path forward that actually fits your life.
Keep asking. Keep pushing. Keep showing up for yourself, even when your own immune system won’t.
Dear self: I love whatever is wrong with you. And I always will.
