The New Normal (Part 1)

The last time I wrote was in January. I guess it’s about time for a 2016 update.

I was watching an intense movie during a nuerofeedback session this past February. My heart felt like it was about to beat out of my chest. I really wanted to cover my eyes but I couldn’t because the session was in progress. Once the electrodes have been placed, any movement skews the brainwave data and makes it hard to follow trends from session to session. Beads of sweat lined my forehead, and my hands were balled up into fists despite the discomfort being caused by my fingernails that were embedded in my sweaty palms. As tightness in my chest spread towards my shoulders I wondered, is Will Smith's acting causing me to have a heart attack? And then it happened. One minute I was watching a team of doctors perform an autopsy on what they thought was a dead alien, and then the next minute the dead alien jumped off of the table. At that same moment I screamed and jumped right out of my chair. 

The following two questions have probably come to mind:

1. Why was she having a panic attack while watching Independence Day?

2. Why has it taken her till 2016 to watch Independence Day?

Those very good questions will eventually be answered.

Starving and anxious; that about sums up how I have been feeling for most of the year. I have also lacked inspiration to write. Actually, lack of inspiration is not the issue. I’ve lacked time and focus. I’ve been keeping a busy schedule. Overall I have more energy and less fatigue, and I am thrilled about that. Focus is my huge issue, I can't seem to find any.  

This past January I celebrated my birthday by going to Costa Rica with my sister for 5 days. It was my first international travel since I started my treatment for Lyme disease almost 5 years ago. While I was excited to be traveling I was also concerned about the usual things; wandering around with my traveling pharmacy and food. With my list of food allergies continually growing despite by best effort to heal my gut, I was worried I’d end up feeling sick and not enjoying my trip if I ran into digestive issues while dining on local fare.

While I am on the subject, let’s talk about my digestive issues. I am sure you would like to hear about my trip, but this isn’t a travel blog, so you're stuck with a digestion discussion. For a month leading up to my departure I sampled many snacks to see if they were worthy of traveling with me. It’s a good thing I sampled them ahead of time, because they were not all as “Julie-friendly” as I thought they would be. One afternoon at work I ate a granola-ish bar with lunch. Later that evening I got really dizzy and nauseous and didn’t link it back to my lunch-time snack, until I threw up around 10:30 pm. You may be wondering how I know it was my snack that made me sick. I can answer that. Almost 8 hours after I ate it, most of it ended up undigested staring back at me from the bowl of my toilet. Gross indeed! And for those of you who are wondering about the aftermath of throwing up with invisalign trays in my mouth, I hate to disappoint you. Due to the dizziness and nausea I was experiencing I knew what was on the horizon, and had removed the trays from my mouth prior to the main event. That particular snack did not make the cut. Between the food and my traveling pharmacy, it’s a miracle I had room to pack clothes.

Costa Rica was awesome. We snorkeled, kayaked, drank a lot of coconut water straight from the source, climbed into a cave, hiked around a volcano, luxuriated in the hot springs, and explored various beaches and a fair amount of the country side in our rental car due to my poor navigational skills. Road signs are few and far between in Costa Rica. For the record, my sister has superior navigation skills but I can be so darn convincing when I'm positive we are heading in the right direction.

The Costa Rican food was about 95% Julie-friendly and I loved it. In fact, I couldn’t eat enough. I was shoveling food into my mouth throughout the whole trip. I blew through my backpack of snacks alarmingly fast and was basically licking the plate clean every time we sat down to eat. The change in my appetite was quite sudden and one evening my sister said “I haven’t seen you eat this much since you’ve been sick”. To be quite honest, neither had I! 

We left Costa Rica and its 90+ degree sunny weather and flew back to DC in time for a snow storm. We played in the snow for a few days. Despite being bundled up in layers upon layers of clothing, it was easy to see that I had lost a significant amount of weight in the eight days we spent together. In fact, January was just the beginning. Both my appetite and weight loss continued to increase through mid-March. In addition, my anxiety and inability to focus spiked, I became very irritable and the brain fog reappeared. I thought I was losing my mind. On a side note, it is not easy to follow a low sugar, low carb diet when you are starving, but I managed to stick to it because I had been working so hard on getting rid of the candida (fungal infection) and I didn’t want to compromise that aspect of my recovery. 

It turns out my appetite, anxiety, inability focus, irritably and brain fog all stemmed from a butterfly-shaped gland that lives in my neck. Doesn’t that description make my thyroid sound way more awesome then it really is? 

Right before Christmas of 2015 I reviewed my latest round of blood work with my doctor and I was still extremely hypothyroid. By the time I went to Costa Rica, about three and a half weeks later; my thyroid suddenly started producing a lot of hormone. It went from hypo (under active) to hyper (over active) and I was still taking the same amount of synthetic hormone because this new development was not known to me or my doctor. This obviously had quite an effect on me. I didn’t get another round of blood work done until mid-March so I experienced a roller coaster of emotions for a good three and a half months until my thyroid medication was adjusted according to my blood work results. If you need a quick refresher on my thyroid, go to the link I included in the first sentence of this post and look for the section titled “What is Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis”. 

The sudden change in my thyroid piqued my interest and I went in to research mode and discovered some interesting information. The first bullet point doesn't pertain to me, the second and third do. 

• Some thyroid patients can have both Hashimoto's and Graves's disease antibodies, which causes the thyroid to cycle up and down through hypothyroidism and hyperthyroidism. This is not a very common situation. 
• Currently I only have antibodies for one autoimmune disease, and that's Hashimoto's. I hope to keep it that way!  
• Some patients who have Hashimoto's thyroiditis are diagnosed during a period when they are hypothyroid. In a thyroid that is failing due to autoimmune disease, the thyroid can frequently stumble in to overdrive, and then back into under-activity. This could be a sign that the thyroid is on its way to burning itself out. 
• Even though I was first treated for Lyme in the mid-90's, my thyroid was never tested until this second Lyme experience I am still knee deep in. What I know is that I have been hypothyroid for at least four and a half years, and about a year ago I started testing positive for Hashimoto's antibodies. Chances are high that I have been having thyroid issues since the mid-90's. 
• It is also possible to experience hypothyroidism symptoms, but periodically have hyperthyroidism symptoms that also appear. Hyperthyroidism symptoms don't cancel out hypothyroidism symptoms, they more often are added to them. 
•  Earlier in this post I mentioned that overall I am feeling more energized and less fatigued. On some days I feel both at the same time, and it's a weird. 

I've grown tired of thyroid talk, let's return to the nuerofeedback. Here’s a refresher just in case you missed the neurofeedback post last year. 

In the midst of my high anxiety I foolishly decided to watch Independence Day despite knowing that a fast-paced movie with a lot of explosions was the last thing I should have chosen, but I had recently seen a crappy movie trailer for Independence Day Resurgence and realized I had never seen the first one that was released in 1996. When I saw the doctor had the movie in her office I took it as a sign that I should watch it. 

I did skew the data for that particular session after I screamed and jumped out of the seat. Leading up to that point, the data showed that I was clenching my jaw and was highly agitated. We had a good laugh about it once my heart rate returned from the stratosphere. At that point I really had no idea what was causing my high anxiety. What I have since learned is that the thyroid gland may be small, but it’s powerful. And it can really affect all aspects of your well-being when it is compromised.  

There is a lot more to share in terms of 2016 regarding the Lyme and thyroid madness. And I still owe you a nuerofeedback follow-up which I promised at the end of the post I just linked you to for a refresher. It refreshed my memory too!

But for now, I’m going to admit something embarrassing and call it a day. I still haven’t seen the end of Independence Day. I’ll get around to it eventually.

To be continued… (In a timely manner)