The next thing I knew, I awoke in a private room, startled at my whereabouts. The room was dark and felt ominous. I didn’t remember coming there from the emergency room. I must have drifted into a deep sleep. I felt as if I were surrounded by an opaque bubble, the sticky kind my kids popped all over their faces. I couldn’t quite get outside of it, and I was not sure if I really wanted to.
Two days passed as if they were brief moments in time. I wished my husband and the boys were there. They didn’t come to see me. It’s best, I guessed. The boys were so little. I didn’t want them to be scared by seeing me in a hospital bed so sick and swollen. Plus, Chuck was too busy, or so he said when he phoned and explained he was taking care of the boys in every spare minute. I was so alone, though. My anxious thoughts were my only company.
As I lay in bed pondering my situation, I became aware of the television turned on in my room. I was not paying attention to it until an advertisement for a pain reliever caught my eye. Immediately following that advertisement, another ad selling constipation medication bellowed through the room. I reached for the remote and started flipping channels and counted more than twenty advertisements in less than five minutes hawking medications for headaches, aches and pains, monthly cramping, arthritis, constipation, diarrhea, baldness, and tooth pain.
Then movie stars, professional ball players, and slinky models all bore witness to miracle prescription drugs recommended by doctors and available by “just calling your doctor for details.” I never paid attention to commercials like these before. Until now, that is. Lying in a hospital bed, deathly sick, changed not only one’s outlook on life but one’s habits.
A noise caught my attention. I spied a mysterious male figure lurking by my door, which was ajar. Maybe it was my husband, I thought, and propped myself upon one elbow. I was disappointed to see it was the ER doctor.
In the midst of pain, anxiety and sleepiness, I hadn’t noticed much while I was in the emergency room, but now I was more aware of what was going on. The doctor was tall, fairly good-looking, and blond. He wore wire-rimmed glasses that were similar in style to the heavy horn rims the ER nurse had worn. With a sincere smile and a rehearsed manner, the doctor slid a chair next to my bed.
“You are a very sick woman,” he said in his official doctor tone. “We need to have a little talk.”
Uh oh, here it comes, I thought. His demeanor reminded me of the hospital protocol on daytime soap operas. I didn’t know this doctor, yet I was being asked to place a tremendous amount of trust in him. Despite his youthful appearance, I did like him, though, and I felt safe in his care for the moment. I tried to concentrate, but was unprepared for what he had to say.
“You have what we call Graves’ disease,” he stated with textbook form.
Startled, I sputtered, “What...”
“It’s a disease of the thyroid gland, yet we don’t know much about it,” he said.
I thought it strange that a contemporary medical doctor didn’t know the cause of such a disease. But I nodded as if this made sense.
He went on, “The thyroid is located at the base of the esophagus in the throat and produces thyroid hormones.” He spoke as if he were reading a script. “Thyroid hormones have a wide variety of effects on the body and are essential to life. They have many effects on metabolism, growth, and development.”
My head throbbed as I tried to focus on the meaning of his textbook explanation.
“Graves’ disease is also called thyrotoxicosis, a hyperactive thyroid gland that produces too much hormone,” he continued to routinely explain. “Excess hormone production causes the body to remain overactive. All of the body’s processes speed up, including digestion. This is why people with hyperactive thyroids typically lose a lot of weight.”
His last words registered on me. “Lose a lot of weight?” I questioned. “I’ve gained thirty pounds.”
Unaffected by this information, he continued, “The most common symptoms associated with hyperthyroidism or Graves’ disease are nervousness, irritability, increased perspiration, insomnia, fatigue, weakness, hair and weight loss, separation of the fingernails, hand tremors, intolerance of heat, rapid heartbeat, and sometimes protruding eyeballs.”
“Let’s see. You’re saying I have twelve out of thirteen symptoms. Why is it that the major symptom I don’t have is weight loss? I’ve gained thirty pounds. My luck!”
He shrugged.
Headaches weren’t on the list. I wondered why not. The mammoth headaches were my most distressing symptoms.
As the doctor leaned over my bed, I struggled to make sense of my situation. I knew something was very wrong, and just the name “Graves’ disease” sounded so foreboding.
“I want to irradiate your thyroid and run some tests on your gall bladder,” the doctor confidently continued.
My gall bladder? When did that come into the picture? I wanted only one problem at a time here! That was all I could handle, anyway.
“I must tell you that after we destroy your thyroid, I’ll have to keep you on medication for the rest of your life to keep you alive,” he added. “But I can fine-tune you so you’ll be better than before.” He smiled a really big smile after he said this—almost sinisterly. I thought of Edgar Allan Poe’s dark, malevolent characters as he rushed on. “You must do something about this soon; however, for you can die if we don’t destroy that thyroid gland.” He startled me as he abruptly pushed back his chair, its wooden legs scraping across the polished linoleum squares. Then he stood up as if, his job done, he was ready to leave the room.
“Wait a minute! Is this all you’re going to say to me?” I cried out. “I have some questions. Don’t run off! We are only getting started. First of all, what do you mean, destroy my thyroid gland?” I asked in desperation. “Is this the only alternative I have?” Who was this guy, anyway? Who was he to tell me what to do? Hey, I’d been through three natural childbirths, taught aerobics for over fifteen years, always eaten right (or so I thought at the time), didn’t smoke or drink, blah, blah, blah. Didn’t all that count for something? The doctor didn’t seem interested in anything other than the standard diagnosis and my sketchy medical history he held on a chart in front of him. However, I wasn’t as cavalier. Before he destroyed a vital part of my anatomy, shouldn’t he carefully study my daily routine to find a cause for this disease, I wondered.
Maybe not. The young doctor turned and silently walked toward the door.
I lay there stunned. Alone and confused, I had no clue as to why I was sick. The doctor didn’t know. Nobody knew. I wanted to call my husband for advice, but he’d been so detached, why bother? He still hadn’t come to the hospital to see me, and I couldn’t tell my family because my dad was still recovering from his heart attack. I was being forced to make a decision about permanently destroying my thyroid gland with very little knowledge and no one to counsel me. Time out!
“Look,” I yelled after the doctor, “I need more information and some time!”
From the doorway, he tried to quickly convince me that he could permanently solve all my problems by simply destroying my thyroid gland. Dr. Edgar Allan Poe hastily said, “Tomorrow I can have a specialist administer a finite dose of radioactive iodine that will ‘kill’ your thyroid.” He tried to convince me that radioactive iodine was the best “thyroid assassin” because it was a simple and convenient treatment. I stared at him transfixed. In other words, it was a quick kill. Easy for him to say—it wasn’t his thyroid!
“Most thyroid specialists recommend radioactive iodine for all their patients over twenty-five years of age with Graves’ disease,” he said as he continued his attempt to win me over. “Radioactive iodine is usually given in capsule form, which doctors prefer over surgically cutting open your throat. If you decide to do this, it will take several weeks to take