Under-diagnosed Under-active Thyroid

“An estimated 50 million people have an underactive thyroid. Most aren’t diagnosed. You could be one of them” - just one of the sensational claims made by books and websites dealing with the subject of thyroid disorders. This is the kind of headline I would have dismissed as ridiculous and irrelevant until I was one of those people. In fact, if it wasn’t for a brief mention of the topic on TV3’s Midday show almost a year ago now, I might still be suffering.

I was flicking through the channels when I happened upon TV3’s Midday show and stopped simply because I’d never seen it before. There was a medical item on, the kind where people phone in with questions for the doctor ,and a woman text in to ask the doctor to highlight the symptoms of underactive thyroid, as a lot of people suffered from it and went undiagnosed. The doctor mentioned some symptoms such as tiredness, feeling cold, irritability, period problems and said it could be very easily diagnosed by a simple blood test by your GP and treated very easily with drugs. Sounds very straight forward.. …

Not really. There I was, sitting on my couch thinking I have those symptoms … could I have an underactive thyroid!!

For almost a year, I had felt unreasonably tired. But I had four children including three year old twins, one of which didn’t sleep through the night ’till he was three! Maybe it wasn’t unreasonable to feel tired all the time.

I had become obsessed with the room thermometer . It never felt warm even though it read twenty degrees. I took to drinking lots of tea and hugging the radiator. But it was winter, so surely that was no reason to go running to the doctor.

My kids were driving me mad!!! I couldn’t hear myself think when they were noisy and was always on a very short fuse. But there are four of them all wanting a piece of me, so nothing to raise alarm bells there.

There were other symptoms too like my periods were very heavy and my skin was very dry, my joints were becoming increasingly stiff and I was putting on a little weight. Each unremarkable in itself but like a jigsaw piece it makes no sense until you put all the pieces together.

So quickly I googled the symptoms of underactive thyroid and found a full list. To my utter amazement, I had all bar one. I couldn’t get to my doctor quick enough and within days I was diagnosed with an underactive thyroid. I was actually very relieved. It explained everything. I wasn’t loosing my mind or I wasn’t just a completely incompetent mother who couldn‘t cope with her own kids. I was sick and I would get well again and that was good news.

The symptoms of underactive thyroid come on very slowly over a long time. They could all be symptoms of something else or be the result of tiredness, stress or being run down and therefore very easy to miss. With thyroid problems affecting an estimated one in five people at some time in their life and women more commonly affect than men, we should all be aware of this illness so that we don’t suffer unnecessarily.

And finally thank you to the women who text in to TV3, who ever you are. If this blog prompts just one person to go to their GP I will have passed on your good deed.