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.

The case of the disappearing fish stickers.

My four year old has lost his fish stickers! He is absolutely convinced he just left them on his bedroom floor and now they’ve just disappeared. We search the room from top to bottom and I cannot find any fish stickers. His twin sister has a sheet of fish stickers in her hand but he insists that he had one too and he left it right there in the middle of the floor. He can point to the exact spot and seems quite perplexed by their disappearance. At this stage, I have to admit that I am starting to doubt him. I’m not so sure there ever were two sheets of fish stickers and I’ve come to the conclusion that he left the stickers down and his sister robbed them.

Stickers have become a bit of a thing in our house since I introduced them recently in an attempt to get the twins to do things for themselves , like go to the toilet completely unaided, eat their dinner and tidy up their toys. I’m starting to wonder about this plan as every surface of my house is now covered in stickers. The idea of sticking them on a chart didn’t go down so well. They much preferred to stick them on their beds and bedroom wall and I didn’t see the harm., but a few weeks and a lot more stickers on, I’m not so sure.

Anyway, we still haven’t found the fish stickers and it is time to go and collect big bro from school. So we abandon the search, which would usually cause a tantrum but we are having a rare good day and he happily trots down the stairs to put on his coat.
As he does he says to me “Mum, I wish I had a rememory so I could remember where I put things.”
“A rememory?” I say .
“Yeah a rememory. I think I’ll have to buy one.”

Later that afternoon ,as I am emptying the wash basket to put on a wash, there tumbles out a sheet of fish stickers. Now consider, if you will, the possibility that there were clothes for the wash on the bedroom floor, as there often is, and that a busy mum hastily gathered them up and put them in the wash basket… I suspect his rememory is quite good actually. Case closed.

I can see the light.

Yes, I really do think I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. I’ve spent so long wonder when it would happen and some days I’m still not so sure if it has, but on the whole things do seem to be getting a whole lot easier. My twins and youngest members of my little quartet turned four recently and will be off to big school in September… halleluiah!! Since they started in Montessori last September things have been very slowly returning to something resembling normality for me, after three and a half years of very full-on motherhood. And eventually I can think about doing something for me. Writing this blog is the first step.

So much has happen to me since I discovered I was expecting twins four and a half years ago and indeed since I first became a mum almost 11 years ago
I’ve been a working mother-of-one, commuting and working in the financial sector , a part-time Montessori teacher, a full-time mum-of-two, a childminder, and most recently and very unexpectedly a full-time mum of four. We always said we’d have three children!! That was the very first lesson ’expect the unexpected’. Number three should have been so easy., a walk in the park, after all I was an experienced mum. I’d done the colicky baby and the total not having a clue whether you’re doing anything right first time mum thing. I’d survived the new baby plus jealous tantrumy toddler. But just when I thought I knew it all, I found myself plunged into the world of multiples. A whole new world with new questions and a new language and I discovered that the two children I had at home were in fact my singletons and I was now carrying dichorionic, diamnionic, dizygotic multiples, or non-identical twins to you and me.

My life changed completely the day I discovered I was expecting twins and I’m only starting to find myself again. Motherhood changes us completely and I suppose the more extreme the circumstances the more unrecognisable we become. My young single self bears no resemblance to the woman I am now. And that makes me sad. The fun and laughter is all but gone. Overwhelming responsibility and sheer exhaustion have extinguished my spark. I long for the energy and vitality to enjoy my wonderful children fully. They are funny, bright and talented. But mostly I bark at them, feel irritated by them and often long for the day when they will no longer need me.

But I can see the light and now that I feel I can find a few extra minutes in my day, it’s time to write down all my experiences, my opinions and feelings and get them out there into the world. Lighten the load and free my mind. And maybe you can tell me if I really have lost my sanity or am I just a regular mum of four, with too much to do and not enough time for everyone.