LOTS going on!!

Well, it's shaping up to be a busy week! That's okay, though. I think it will help to keep me out of a rut.

I slept a lot better last night than I did on Saturday night (still not the best, but better, so I can't complain!). However, I did wake up with a headache. It always worries me when I haven't even started my day and I have a headache already. Ugh. :o) Yesterday, though, I was supposed to go with some friends to a Sunday church meeting of ours that's about an hour and a half away. Usually I go right here in L-town, but this was a special day and we were to head to the "W" household for meeting and lunch. Needless to say, my lack of sleep prevented me from going because I could NOT function at all. So I missed out on that. I was so disappointed!!! After moping around for most of the day, feeling sorry for myself, I started to work on changing my thinking by repeatedly telling myself, "I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be today." It helped! :)

Anyway, I got quite a bit finished at my place as far as food prep for my special low-iodine diet that I am now on. It started today. So, I've got some soup (minestrone) cooking in the crock pot at home and have got some other meals that I need to cook up tonight, so I'll be busy with that.

Tomorrow I am heading to the "friendly ghost" town north of here, C-city, for a nice day away from the office. A friend is coming with and we have a lot of stuff planned to keep us busy, so it will be good. Wednesday is "lab day" and I will get the results of what my TSH is currently at. I will let you know as soon as I find out what it is! Remember, I have to be above 30 to be ready for testing!! Thursday morning is my final exam in my Human Anatomy course that I took this semester and then that afternoon I have an appointment with my endocrinologist. She will touch base with how things are going and we will set up stuff (hopefully!!) for my scans. I'm hoping for the week of the 14th for the scans, but the lab work on Wednesday will elude to our possibilities.

So, busy, busy, busy. But I will touch base throughout the week to at least let you know how things are progressing, medically. I hope you have a great Monday and a wonderful week! It's the beginning of finals week here at UW, so things have S-L-O-W-E-D to a crawl!! It's a nice change, but usually by August we're ready for the students to come back! :) So, my "catch up" week this week is sure to be good!

A simple request

So here I am. 3 AM. Another sleepless night! Aaargh! What is going on!?

Either way, I was meaning to post this bit of info, so why not now! :o) In the monthly magazine that I get from my gym, Curves for Women, there was a request in the magazine and it reads as follows:

"I'm writing in regard to one of my member's nephews who has leukemia. He is going to be 8 on May 30th and his only birthday request is to receive as many birthday cards as possible. At our Curves, we have headed up a project with local schools and our members to ask family and friends to send him a card. If you can highlight this in [the monthly magazine], diane, it would spread it world wide and be amazing to a dying little boy. -- Chris, manager, Alexandria, Ontario, Canada"

Needless to say, my card is in the mail and I hope you'll want to send one, too! If you'd rather not send a card, maybe you could send a prayer his way instead. The mailing address is:

Shane Bernier
PO Box 484
Lancaster, Ontario
CANADA K0C 1N0

You can find out more about him at http://www.shaneswish.com/

(FYI -- The numbering after CANADA reads "K-zero-C 1-N-zero". It was kind of hard to read on my end, so I wanted to make it clear for you what it was.)

Happy Friday!

Nothing new to report. Just a lovely day in L-town!! Yippee! Summer is a-comin'!!!

I didn't sleep the best last night and was up at 5 AM (I couldn't sleep, so I figured I might as well GET UP!) so I'm running kinda slow today. Those of you that know me know how much I love to sleep, so when it's a lacking element in my life...well, let's just say it's not pretty!

I'm glad the weather outside is nice, though. It helps me to feel a bit better! Most of you know I used to do my cancer checks in the middle of winter, so you can imagine what a dreary, depressed mess I was by the end of it!! But I said, "No more!" and pleaded with the doctors to let me do the testing when the weather was nicer. So, this is an experiment. Hopefully the sun, sun, sunniness of L-town's late spring/early summer will do wonders in boosting my spirits.

I can only hope!

Have a great weekend, everyone. I'm going to lay low and enjoy the 70-80 degree weather we are supposed to have. Did you hear that? Yeah. It was a sigh of happiness from me! ;o)

By the way...

TSH -- Thyroid Stimulating Hormone. Everyone has it. It's the hormone your thyroid puts out. Someone once explained the thyroid to me as the accelerator to your body. It gives you energy and keeps you going, and that's only the beginning. So...

My TSH level (as of yesterday) is a 12.

What does that mean?

Well, in order for my body to be "ready" for my cancer scans, my TSH has to be at 30 or above.

Is that bad? Yes. According to the hospital where I have my labwork done, the normal TSH levels range from 0.46 to 4.68. However, because I have had thyroid cancer, my endocrinologist supresses what thyroid hormone I get through my pills.

What does that mean? My average TSH is lower than most peoples. It's usually around 0.33.

So, yes, 30 is bad.

Would you like to know something else? By the time I actually go to the doctor's office for my body scans, my TSH is well into the 100s. By then, I'm a pretty worthless individual. Not much energy and not very exciting to be around! :(

The effects of no synthroid

I was asked by a coworker yesterday if I was starting to feel the effects of not being on my synthroid (I'm almost to the end of my second week being off the stuff. Keep in mind, this medicine is my thyroid!! They removed the entire thryoid in 2003, so mine is now a little blue pill and every time I do these tests, I am off that little blue pill for 4-6 weeks. Uck.) Anyway, I started thinking about it and I am starting to feel the effects! Here's my list of noticeable changes:

• An "I don't care attitude". Just a lack of energy/care, really. It's not that I feel depressed or anything, I just feel...blah.
• Sluggish
• Frequent headaches.
• Not sleeping as well (I'm not sure if that has anything to do with being off the meds, but my faint recollection tells me that it does start to affect the quality of sleep.)
• Memory lapses! It's crazy! I have the hardest time focusing on things and thoughts/directions to my conversations just fall out of my head, never to return. It's wild how I just can't remember what I'm trying to say! I'm supposed to take the final next week for my class. That could be a challenge!
• Loss of apetite. The bummer of it is that I haven't even started the "ucky" diet yet. You know, I was talking to my Weight Watchers leader last night about the low-iodine diet and it seems that each time I talk about the diet, it doesn't seem as bad as when I'm actually doing the diet. I wonder if that has to do with lack of thyroid (aka, little blue pill)? :)

And to think...this is only going to get better!!! :) (*Editor's Note: Read the last sentence with strong sarcasm.)

Thyroid Cancer Checkup

So, I was saying to my friend, M, this morning that there are SO many people with blogs and everyone is doing it. But I've been inspired by my English Prof friend and now I feel like doing this. Again. This is my third start with a blog. We'll see how long this one goes for. :)

I'm starting to prep for my annual thyroid cancer check ups and...I just dread it. It's not that the whole process is that terrible, but it's not fun either. I start thinking about people that die from this C-crap every year (people I know and don't know) and I think, "You should be happy to be alive." Even still, I struggle with it.

I'm in my second week of being off of my thyroid medication and next week I will head into the Low-Iodine Diet phase of this. If you're ever dealing with thyroid cacner, there's a great website out there that helps you with everything. It's http://www.thyca.org/. It gives you a low-iodine cookbook, basic thyroid cancer information and thyroid cancer conference information, etc. I've found it most helpful for the cookbook. It's a lifesaver!!

So, I will continue to press forward with this and just take one day at a time. Ugh. At least the promise of summer is right in front of me.