The SICK CHEF Cooking Show! and I Love You My Little Thyroid

The SICK CHEF Cooking Show!

I had a 15 minute burst of energy enough to make the fiancé and I some chicken soup. (See cooking special below for absurdity).

Overall it’s been a gloriously ill ride the last couple of days. I had a brief burst of energy the Thursday after the ER, but I spent most of that energy doing the most basic of things like cleaning, eating, and grading creative writing papers. That said, I may have overdid it, because Friday (today) I’m wiped out again.

But that’s the way with POTS and a lot of chronic illnesses. We might have brief bursts of energy—and often we aren’t sure whether we should even use them. We don’t want to use ALL of our energy. And maybe that burst is all we’ll have for days. But then sometimes, I just embrace it and use it. I never know if I’ll have more again anytime soon, so it’s best to just get what I can get, particularly now that I’ve got the secondary virus and bronchitis with sinusitis I’m fighting.

Some of what makes the wax and wane of energy so crappy, doesn't even have anything to do with my body. It's when people see people like me have a brief burst of energy and they think we’re okay. They think, “Oh she’s fine again.” No. More often than not it is short lived.

I Love you my little Thyroid

Last night a bunch of my hair fell out in the shower in two lumps in my hand. Mind you I have the finest, thinnest hair already. Losing it makes me cringe.

It sucks, but it’s not uncommon. I have hypothyroidism and when I get really ill, sometimes that puts a strain on my thyroid to the point where I end up with clumps of hair in my hand, standing in the shower, sighing or cursing.

But I’m pregnant too, so that puts its own strain on the thyroid as well. Tests in the past month showed that my thyroid was doing well, but as with everything, I’ll have to get a follow-up test. It may be once I’m better from being sick with the virus and Bronchitis my thyroid will be fine. Or it could be now that the baby is much bigger at 5 months that I’ll need a higher dose.

That said, today I was out of my Armour thyroid.  And since Matt seemed so ill this morning, I didn’t have the heart to wake him to get it for me. Looking back, I probably should have just woken him. I felt shitty just from getting the meds. And then, after all that, I realized Dad had left me some of his spare pills in the house just for a situation like this. I'd forgotten all about them!

Sunday Before Week 20 - Hi

August 21st, 2016

showing off horror flick moves in utero

I’m starting this blog because while I found a ton of info, articles, and blogs on whether or not I should conceive while chronically ill, I didn’t find a whole lot regarding the in-over-my-head feeling I have now that I am pregnant while chronically ill.

This really came to a boiling point this week, because on Monday, August 22nd, I’ll be twenty weeks pregnant (5 months)—the “half way point” of pregnancy—and I've felt the worst I’ve felt yet, while every pregnancy app out there says stuff like, “You’re probably feeling like you have much more energy now! Most women feel this way in the second trimester.” To top it off I woke up yesterday with a sore throat, headache, and cough, which will mark the fourth time sick while pregnant (I’ve already dealt with Shingles and Epstein Barr reactivations), because when you have a chronic illness, getting a cold is pretty darn easy.

I’m a writer and artist. It’s what I do. I suppose I need this in order to process the isolation at times, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized, If I feel this way, how many other women must too?

So I dedicate this to you, ladies. We are the “high risk” ladies. We are the knocked up chronically ill. We are the invisible illness ladies and the not so invisible illness ladies, working on making a human while trying to function basic tasks. I toast this start off message with a non-alcoholic beverage just for you.

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My journey begins as a POTS (Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome) patient, co-diagnosed with Fibromyalgia, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Insulin-Resistance, Hypothyroidism, and a couple of amino acid or vitamin deficiencies that are the first of their kind documented in the entire world. I was a research patient for about six years. I’ve had more tests done on me than I care to remember. I wanted to make a difference though for other POTS patients. Finally, this research paper was written and published about my cells. (See: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25466896 ) Hopefully it will help others.

Just before I got pregnant I had the worst bout of Shingles in years and period that lasted a month (they found a polyp and presumed that was the cause). I didn’t anticipate my body was even well enough to conceive, let alone maintain a pregnancy beyond the first trimester. And we weren’t trying to conceive. I simply miscalculated my ovulation because of all the previous bleeding like a total moron and the lousy mathematician I am.  My mother had asked, “How did this happen?”  Well, Mom, the usual way combined with sheer stupidity, really.

In fact I had already decided I wasn’t well enough to try to have a pregnancy. I had set up an appointment with a fertility doctor to discuss getting my eggs taken out. I had filled out forms to receive information about adoption. My significant other hadn’t proposed yet, but I’m thirty-five. I figured it was high time I plan stuff. Frozen eggs and adoption info seemed logical. And terribly responsible. I would have children at forty via adoption or surrogacy if—and only IF—I was well enough then. I was pretty proud of my well-planned genius self.

Here's a snapshot of a dorky thirty-something couple with almost everything figured out during Christmas vacation.

But we got pregnant and I figured if out of all the miraculous things that had to come together in order for my body to even conceive, I would help this life the best I could. There are parents out there dying to conceive. Maybe, I thought, this is the lucky gift I get after so many years of suffering a serious chronic illness? 

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