As Fun as a Needle in Yer' Neck!

So autoimmune disease

is like this:

Your body is a house.

Your immune system is a bodyguard 

set outside the door to keep you and your house safe.

One day the bodyguard opens the door, steps in with a baseball bat, and starts

 bashing the crap out of your tchotchkes and thingamabobbles. 

  Then he bonks you on the head for good measure. 

Sadly, Western Medicine's approach is:

Get a broom and dustpan and sweep up behind the bodyguard, 

replace the Ming vase with a coke bottle, 

and slap a bandage on your head.

They do not, however, try to kick out the bodyguard.

The cycle is expected to continue until the house is destroyed and you have hamburger for brains. 

Then you get moved to a cheap apartment.

All that is to say that the basic approach is to treat the symptoms, replace the hormones that the damaged organ is not able to make, and wait

 for more damage and eventual destruction. 

It's not how I do things.

I study. I research. I experiment. 

My goal is to find a way

 to reform the bodyguard. 

Maybe even get him back on my side. 

*****

This is how it’s been:

GP, Rheumatology, Head and Neck, Dermatology, Allergy, Optomology and Opthomology have all sent me on to the next guy. It’s autoimmune hot-potato

(and, by the way, each one have said “There is no research to support diet changes, but if it makes you "feel better", go ahead.” And by feel better, they don’t mean physically). 

I had been told by other autoimmune folks not to hope for much from an endocrinology appointment. 

 I kept my expectations low. 

After the usual “where does it hurt?” chit-chat, Dr. P did an ultrasound of my thyroid. The growths were only slightly suspicious to her, though she admitted that cancer tended to have vague borders, which my growth (she said there was only one) had. She told me a biopsy was up to me, or we could wait and see. 

Hmmmm... wait 6 months and see if it’s cancer, or find out now.... 

what to chooooose....

Now, please!

Oh, wait, she meant NOW now. 

No appointment for a month from today. 

Now. 

I hoped up on the table, she sprayed my neck with utterly useless numbing spray, 

and then sunk a needle into my throat (the answer is 

YES.IT.HURT.LIKE.BLUE.BLAZES!  Thanks for asking).   

And if one stick in the neck was good, four was even better.

Guy said he could see the needle on the ultrasound as she dug all around in my neck with it each time. Apparently it is a little unpleasant to watch.

Of course, I was sorry to have been such a nuisance to him. 

On my end, it felt like my throat had mice with ice cleats on running around inside it.

She bandaged up my neck. 

I was miffed that after all that, 

she gave me a Barbie doll bandaid. 

It was kinda’ insulting, frankly.

She then gave me a prescription. Traditionally I avoid meds when possible, but new research has indicated that even if my thyroid levels are in the safe zone, they might be too low for me personally. So if a small amount of  medication could help my symptoms, I was willing). 

But my favorite part of the appointment was when she encouraged me to modify my diet. 

WHAT?! A doctor that believes you can influence your health by improving your diet? I pretty much almost hugged her!

She made a few suggestions. I smiled at Guy. I told her what I have been doing the past 2 months (more on that later). She was surprised and the strictness of my food protocol, but was all in favor. 

We chatted about a medical industry that is driven by pharmaceutical companies who finance studies intended to promote dependence on the drugs they manufacture. Of course, there aren’t many studies on diet!  No drug company wants you to see food as medicine.  Grocery stores don't require prescriptions.

*****

So that was last week. 

And lucky you, you don’t even have to wait as long as I did for the results. 

Negative. 

Yay for no cancer! That’s twice in two months.

I guess, for that, I will forgive them their puny bandaid. 

The Lesson in Daffodils

I have always loved daffodils.  In fact, I planted them in the tiny yard of our little apartment back in Santa Rosa, and dozens more in both the front and back of the Rancho house.  I wanted to bring them with me when we moved, but it seemed silly to dig up the yard.   But I knew how much the love I had given to my yard would be appreciated by the next owners of our little house.  So I left behind my daffodils, irises, crocus, lilacs, wisteria, callas, African daisies, and roses to be loved in their new life by their new people.

About three months after we moved from Rancho, we were invited back to neighbor Betty's house to go swimming.  When we got to her back yard, I couldn't help but glance through the chain link fence between her yard and that of my old house, only to see that all of it, every flower, every plant, was either dead or dying.  Even my hearty lavender was nearly gone.

.......Yes!  Of course I was devastated!!!  I should have rescued every last bulb and branch!

But we live here now.  Here, where the deer will eat anything.  Anything, that is, but daffodils.  I don't know why, but they won't touch them.  And there are, kindly left behind by the previous owner, several patches of daffodils throughout our new property.  Soon after we moved in I decided I would add to them, but missed the planting season last year.  So this fall I bought a big bag of bulbs, and marked my calendar for the perfect day to plant them; October 5th.  There was no special reason except that the almanac showed it to be ideal.  Funny, though, now that I think of it, it is both the day Guy and I got engaged and the day we lost one of the babies.  Isn't it strange how after so many years -a day of such joy, and later a day of such pain- it would become just a day; a nice day for planting flowers.

But buying those bulbs in the middle of September might have been the last thing I did before the shingles hit.  I postponed the bulb planting, thinking, soon... soon... But when the shingles morphed and Hashimoto's showed up, the bulbs were set aside.

Aside, but I could feel them begging to be planted.  I know bulbs need to be cold all winter to bloom well, so that wasn't a problem.  They were certainly cold enough in their resting spot by the stairs.  But they wouldn't last forever out there.

I have been, in the interim,  going to doctors about once a week and getting lots of tests run.  The GP sent me to the rheumatologist and the allergist.  The allergist sent me to the dermatologist.  The optometrist sent me to the ophthalmologist who is sending me to the oculoplastic surgeon.  Everyone is giving me creams and drops and ointments, which is just a barrel of monkeys.  The big, superdy-duper important appointment, the one with the endocrinologist, is finally just days away.  That is the one where (we hope, though we have been told we shouldn't bother hoping) there may be some answers and treatments for the Hashimoto's.  My thyroid ultrasound showed two large growths, so that is what I am most interested in resolving (read between the lines... checking for cancer).  And all the while the damage to my thyroid has played out in the typical symptoms... the exhaustion, sleepiness, pain, dry eyes and hair loss, for me, are dominant out of the dozens of symptoms of the disease.

So there they sit... the daffodil bulbs, with all of their potential for life and beauty, packed in tight behind a mesh net bag.  They have become a symbol for what is going on for me.  All that I want to do but can't, all that I desire to create and accomplish, bound up and restrained.

I went outside a few days ago to help Adam find a part to the leaf blower.  We searched the usual spots (put away. why would it be put away?) and then I went for the less obvious spots (the ones where lazy children dump things.  I know, why didn't I check there first?).

Well, I didn't find the part, but I did find the bulbs. And the instant I saw them I burst with a joyous laugh...

They didn't care that they weren't planted... no soil, no pot!  They didn't even mind the tight mesh bag pressing them from all sides.  There, peaking  -no, reaching!- out of the blue mesh, were two dozen green stalks.  They had found their way out of the bulbs, out of the bag, and into the light, reaching skyward.

I can't tell you what those amazing little bulbs have done for me.

I'm still very tired and often in pain.  I sleep a lot, and when I am not sleeping, I'm counting the hours and minutes till my next nap.  I'm not painting or making pots or much else.  I do school with the kids, and drive here and there, and then collapse on the couch in the sunny window, trying to warm up.  But ever since seeing those daffodils reaching out of their bindings, I have felt a little freer, a little more cheerful, and a little less weighted down.  I know that this is going to be a long process and maybe get much worse before it gets better, but I think the lesson in the daffodils, for me, is to take my rest but not give up.  It might be hard, and it won't be like it was before, but I will still be able to make, and do, and be something beautiful.

The other day I asked my husband for a blessing, a special prayer for health and comfort.  After it was done, a friend who was there suggested that maybe someone out there who is going through a similar struggle would benefit from my sharing my journey here.  

I hope you all won't mind.