Hello! Oh my gosh I've been gone so long. It's funny how I never made a conscious decision to stop blogging, it just happened.
Sometimes things happen in our lives gradually until all of a sudden there it is. I've been dealing with an illness like that. Gradually getting sicker, not knowing why, until suddenly I was really sick. Almost thirty years ago I was diagnosed with hypothyroidism and on a replacement hormone to keep my levels regulated. Over the last four or five years, those levels have swung wildly all over the place from super hyperactive to the next month completely underactive. Every time, my med's would just be adjusted up or down to deal with the new swing. At one point I had asked my doctor if I needed to see a specialist because I was feeling horrible and it's not right to have those wild swings. "Oh no", she said. "We just need to get you regulated." Hmmm...ok. But I didn't know the right questions to ask.
Fast forward to this past fall. Like I said, I had been gradually getting sicker and then we went on a trip to spend Thanksgiving with family in Wyoming. By the time we got back home, I was so sick with what I thought was the flu that I couldn't get off the couch for almost the entire month of December. Along with that I started to experience some incredible pain in my hands, to the point that my husband had to cut up my food because I couldn't do it. Extreme fatigue. Headaches. Fevers. All over body ache. Terrible.
During this time, I decided that I was going to switch doctors. I just wasn't happy with the non-answers I was getting. Something had to change. I called a Naturalpath in town that I had heard good things about and waited until late January for my first appointment. By then, I had rallied a bit but things were still not good. I took her a list of all of my symptoms, never suspecting that they could all be tied to that thyroid issue. She looked at my list, asked a lot of questions and said that from what I had told her she highly suspected something autoimmune. I went right over to the lab for some blood tests and two days later my new, and wonderful, doctor called me to let me know that my TSH level, (thyroid stimulating hormone), was off the charts. She had never seen one so high. Also my autoimmune markers were extremely high. Hashimoto's Thyroiditis. An autoimmune disease that, over time, attacks and destroys your thyroid. That guy, Hashimoto's, has most likely been with me since I was a teenager, doing his dirty work behind the scenes, and no other doctor in all those years ever looked for it.
Now I have a wonderful doctor, which is key, who has me on a protocol that is mostly natural and is making me feel so much better. This is an autoimmune disease so flares can and will happen, but knowing what I'm dealing with and how to treat it is HUGE!! A natural thyroid hormone, a gluten-free diet, enough rest, Vitamin D, E Omega's, and an herbal protocol are really making a difference. My doctor knows that I use certified pure Essential Oils and has given me her blessing to use these oils instead of the other herbs that she would have given me. She had told me, optimistically, that it would be 6 months to a year before I really saw a difference. I am 2-1/2 months in to my diagnosis and the difference already is significant. Like I said, flares will happen, and I am not back to 100% yet, but I have faith that I will get there.
If you would like to learn more about the use of essential oils, please contact me for more information. I'm more than happy to share what I have learned and what is working for me!
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