Partial Suicide: 48 Hours After Radioactive Iodine Treatment

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“Have you ever wanted to kill yourself?” my husband asked as we discussed my hyperthyroid treatment options.

“Not really,” I answered, giving him my ‘What are you suggesting?’ look.

“Well, I just thought that if you had, then now you could fulfill part of that dream—you know, since part of you would die.”

Part of me would die…

I think that has been the toughest part about this whole thing. Not only was a part of me dying, but an innocent victim was being executed. It wasn’t my thyroid’s fault. It was my immune system’s. Or was it?

Graves’ Disease is an autoimmune disorder, commonly understood to be brought on by stress. Under prolonged stress, the immune system gets…let’s say confused, and it sends false messages to the thyroid, telling it to produce more thyroid hormone. This in turn speeds up the heart and increases metabolism, causing life to get pretty uncomfortable and confusing.

The three primary treatment options offered by western medicine get at the symptoms of the disease, rather than the cause. It may be my thyroid that’s causing my heart to beat erratically, but it’s my immune system that told it to do so.

But before we start blaming the immune system for wrecking havoc on our lives, let’s look again: why did it start telling the thyroid to produce more thyroid hormones in the first place? Stress.

Stress causes a whole host of problems in the body, knocking systems out of whack. The immune system is just one of many.

At the point at which we realize that stress is the cause of our illness, many of us want to point our finger at the rest of the world for making it so hard on us. But the fact remains that while we can’t control what our external environment is like—bosses, bills, screaming kids, annoying co-workers, we can control our internal environment.

The sooner we learn to calm the oceans inside of us, the happier and healthier we will be.

Thyroid? What’s a Thyroid?

>Just as I was readying myself to head off to grandma’s house for holiday dinner on Christmas Eve 2010, I received a call from my doctor. Actually, a message on their automated voice mail service: my blood work came back.

I expected nothing. I really did. I’d been feeling awful–dizziness, weakness, heart palpitations–but still I had been searching the net for months already and hadn’t been able to come up with anything that sounded like it could be the cause of my troubles. I figured this was going to be another one of those cases where the doctors were baffled and I learned to live with feeling rotten.

Your T3 and T4 levels are elevated, in accordance with hyperthyroidism…

What? I played the message again. The same words haunted me again, and these thoughts came whirling from my brain: “Thyroid? What’s the thyroid do? What’s a T3? What’s a T4? There aren’t any thyroid problems in my family. It must be a mistake…”

Whisked away to Christmas dinner before I could even do enough research to remember what the thyroid does, the shock continued throughout the day.

When I got home, I was able to do a bit more exploring. The Mayo Clinic’s website was one of them that was most helpful to me that evening. If you have recently been diagnosed with a thyroid disorder, I recommend their website: mayoclinic.com.

Radioactive Iodine Ablation

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Today I received radioactive iodine treatment for my Graves’ Disease. The decision to have this treatment was a difficult one for me–despite the fact that I’ve been feeling awful for months (dizziness, muscle weakness, overall tiredness, chest pains, heart palpitations) simply because the idea of killing off a part of me didn’t seem right, and introducing a radioactive substance to my body seemed no less ludicrous.

After a great deal of thought and a failed attempt at anti-thyroid drugs (I had the rare side effect of liver damage) radioactive iodine became the best treatment option.

If you or someone you love is struggling with Graves’ Disease and is also in the midst of making this difficult decision, here are some websites I found useful that you too may wish to explore:

http://www.mayoclinic.org/graves-disease/treatment.html
http://www.radiologyinfo.org
http://www.endocrinologist.com/

 Feel free to share your story or post questions. I will do my best to answer them here.