He looked stunned.
I thought the doctor believed he was sincerely doing his best to help me. I, however, preferred to discuss alternatives before I irreversibly destroyed one of my body parts. A necessary body part, I might add!
“I’ll feel much better about your advice,” I remarked, “if you’d be willing to first explore with me the cause of my Graves’.”
He shrugged, and his apparent lack of interest in this aspect was an important turning point in my final decision not to follow his advice.
I cried out, “This is insane! I am not going to kill my thyroid with radioactive iodine! What happens to the poison once it leaves my thyroid? What else does it destroy on its way out? And don’t tell me it won’t do the rest of my body any harm!”
Taken aback by the force of my words, the doctor slowly inched his way farther out the door. He quickly added as he moved out of view, “You’d better do something about this soon, for you are in danger with a thyroid as overactive as yours. You cannot live with vital signs as high as yours are right now. Think about this for a couple of days if you have to, but I wouldn’t take any longer. I can be ready to irradiate you in twenty-four hours.”
When he finally disappeared, a multitude of feelings simultaneously rushed through me. “I can’t suddenly come down with a deadly disease with no known cause or cure!” I cried out to the empty room like a defiant child. I didn’t buy his explanation, but I was too exhausted to think about it anymore. I was being held captive in my unfamiliar bubble of confusion. I laid back and pulled the sterile hospital sheet up to my chin.
I wanted to sleep. I closed my eyes in hopes of sleeping forever, in hopes of escaping this nightmare.
It didn’t take me long to fall into unconsciousness, and as I slipped away, I descended somewhere far, far inside myself, thinking, here I will search for answers.
I knew I had to find them and quickly, or I would die!
And all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty together again.
I awoke after a few hours of hard sleep with images of Humpty Dumpty running through my brain. I went over my symptoms for the umpteenth time. Foreboding thoughts ricocheted through my mind. Since no one else could or would, I decided that it was up to me to put myself back together again. I definitely couldn’t turn to my husband for support—he was now avoiding both my problems and me. My parents didn’t even know I was in the hospital: I never told them because of Dad’s health problems. I wasn’t sure how to do it, but I couldn’t resist the pun: I’ll rise from the Graves’. Gallows humor, I grimaced, but any kind of laughter was better than none. My attempts to find humor in my situation helped me to deal with the desperation I didn’t want to feel.
There was only one solution. I had to find the real cause of my condition. I vowed not to make any permanent decision to destroy my thyroid until I had answers. So I made my decision not to make a decision.
In my mind I went over my symptoms one by one. One thing about my condition that was jarring, especially since the doctor said weight loss was a usual symptom of Graves’ disease, was my illogical weight gain. Was it some sort of clue that something wasn’t right about his diagnosis?
I questioned the doctor several times about the inconsistency of my weight gain in relation to Graves’ disease. “Most patients who have a thyroid as overactive as mine lose a lot of weight,” I told him. “They don’t put on thirty pounds.”
His only comment: “Oh, you women! Always worrying about your weight!” I wanted to blurt out what I thought of his patronizing attitude. Instead I kept quiet. “You don’t need to worry about what you look like right now. You need to concern yourself with getting well first.”
“Well” to him meant losing my thyroid gland.
“But, if it’s really Graves’ disease, shouldn’t I be losing weight?” I repeated in hopes of getting an answer. “Instead, I’m gaining weight. This makes no sense.”
I never got him to focus on this clue that something other than Graves’ disease could be causing my symptoms. He continued to insist my only course of action was to grant permission for them to destroy my thyroid. But for me it was a red flag.
Not only my self-image, but my life was changing without my permission, and I couldn’t seem to stop it. I felt as if I had no control over myself anymore. Somehow, it had to stop, I told myself.
I made up my mind that I wouldn’t do anything the doctor told me to do. Expecting to be judged as a defiant child, I informed him, “I am not going to irradiate my thyroid gland. Instead, I’m launching a campaign to find the cause of my Graves’ before making any final decisions.”
“You’re making a big mistake,” he said ominously.
“Perhaps. But it’s my life, and I take responsibility for it.”
Shaking his head, he left the room.
Though he had no interest in symptoms that didn’t fit his diagnosis, he returned to quiz me at least a dozen times about my family medical history. Each time he asked, “Does anyone in your family have thyroid problems or diabetes? Have I already asked you this?”
My repeated reply, “I have no medical history—I am adopted,” didn’t seem to ever register with him. Though my questions to him appeared to get no reaction, he had aroused my curiosity about my absence of medical records and I thought I should try to contact my birth mother to ask her. However, the thought of doing that was a little scary and a little too much to think about at the present time.
Nevertheless, for the time being, I took a big chance defying his advice, elixirs, and pessimistic predictions. But I had to honor my own instincts. I knew that keeping my thyroid gland was the right thing to do. At least until I had more information.
For three days I had laid there with tubes and wires connecting me to IV bags, EKGs, and sterile antibiotic drips. My immune system was so compromised by that point that I developed a serious upper respiratory infection. My blood pressure was too high, as well as my heart rate and cholesterol. Holding my lab results on a chart before him, the doctor asked with a puzzled look on his face, “What do you eat? You look so fit. Your blood levels don’t match up, in my opinion.”
Equally as puzzled, I answered, “Well, a couple of days ago I had tofu for lunch. I always watch what I eat. Because I have been gaining weight this past year, I have been dieting regularly. I never had a weight problem until a year ago.”
“Tofu? You eat tofu but have a cholesterol of three hundred?” he asked suspiciously.
“Yep,” I responded. “I think I’m doing everything right. I watch what I eat, exercise every day, don’t smoke or drink, never eat sweets or crave chocolate. I’m just as confused about this as you are.” It was the damned weight thing again. I knew it was a major factor in this equation. I just couldn’t figure out how it fit in.
“Why am I sick? What’s going on here?” I asked. “Why have I gained so much weight when I am careful about my diet and exercise every day? Plus, I have an overactive thyroid gland! None of this makes sense. There has to be