If I don't get a period by the 6th, this will be the longest I have gone (two months) without one since they guinea-pigged me with various psych meds in my late teens causing my period to stop for three years. 

I started treating the superficial nail fungus I have in a few of my toenails, except for the toe they just removed the ingrown nail from. It just looks like clear nail polish that you brush on. Got to do it twice a day and hope for an improvement in four weeks. 

Getting a little nervous as my blood work approaches. I have made sure to get foods low in cholesterol this week leading up to it. Hopefully, the thyroid medication has brought my cholesterol numbers down so they will not want me back on statins. 

Got a quick message from my sister. She’s not liking the allergy shots and the effect they have on her, but she sounds a lot better. 

Got my third figurine from the Forever in Blue Jeans collection. They are cheap but very cute and durable. Right now I’m “turking” some decorative face plates for plugs and light switches. That means I use my survey money on MT to pay for them. 

So far for my FBJ collection, I have a father swinging his son, a daughter hugging her mother, and an expectant mother with a toddler. 

I also got a small black silhouette sticker of a gymnast on a balance beam and stuck it on the cabinet door of my desk. It looks nice there. 

The last thing we got was a motion sensor plug so that the rainbow tape lights light up whenever we walked down our long hallway. It’s almost hypnotizing sitting there watching the colors slowly cycle through, one morphing into another. 

In last night’s dreams, I was looking for a new therapist, though I don’t know why I wouldn’t just go to my old one if I ever felt I needed therapy again. 

I watched these strange machines wrap fabric containing prints of the American flag around these large baskets. I thought they were incredibly dull-looking. 

Then I was visiting some woman in her apartment who had another female friend visiting as well. The woman had 4 young children but none of them were home at the time. One of them, her son Cody, she said she had with a guy she was fearful of. She was afraid that he was going to come to the apartment. 

“But what’s there to be afraid of?” I asked, not about to be afraid of some guy I never even met. ”There’s one of him and three of us.” 

I saw what was the scariest Forensic Files episode last night, and this one had nothing to do with murder like their other episodes. Some people started off by saying that they suddenly experienced irregular heart rhythms, racing hearts, booming hearts and diarrhea. I thought to myself, boy that sounds familiar. Then they went on to describe other symptoms… jittery, anxiety, weight loss, loss of appetite, and I thought, wow, that really sounds familiar. 

To back up a bit… there was a section of the Midwest that was once known as the Goiter Belt. There was little iodine in the soil and because of that and other things people often developed enlarged thyroids. That was when the Mayo brothers opened a clinic to remove people’s enlarged thyroids. Eventually, diets improved and the thyroid problems went away. 

I’m not sure when it was, but not too long ago a bunch of people in the Midwest came down with these horrifying symptoms. Nobody could figure it out. One guy was told he might have cancer, and another woman was told she was having a nervous breakdown. Some doctor gave her a mood elevator and the next thing she knows her heartbeat is doing 160. 

Blood tests showed that these people’s thyroid hormone levels were 8 to 10 times higher than normal. None of these people had enlarged thyroids, though, and everybody was stumped as to why these people would suddenly have all these symptoms. Then one day a huge family got together for a meal and every single one of them but a little boy got sick with the same symptoms. The little boy was the only one in the family that didn’t eat meat. Realizing that the whole family couldn’t possibly be having a nervous breakdown all at once, they began to suspect the meat and inspected it to find bits and pieces of the cow’s thyroid mixed into it. They gave some of the meat to some rats, then they gave other rats different meat from a different area. Sure enough, the rats given the meat the family and others consumed came down with the same symptoms. But the meat that the rats ate was raw, and the people had eaten cooked meat, of course. So they cooked the meat and served 4 young and possibly crazy doctors a burger. They too, experienced the same thing. 

It turns out that when Synthroid hit the scene they stopped removing the cows’ thyroids and simply left them in the gutted meat. The FDA then made it mandatory that the thyroids be removed. Over 100 people were affected but everybody recovered and there were no fatalities. 

My heart truly went out to these people, knowing that I was probably one of the very few people watching this particular episode who knew firsthand what it was like and what they were feeling. The shitty coincidence of the timing is what made me think I accidentally overdosed (as opposed to being prescribed a dose that was too high for me). The very same day I wondered if I accidentally took an extra pill was when my problems started. Although I suspected the medication from the start, even I was a bit confused at first because of the way one tends to think that as soon as they stop a medication that’s causing a problem, the problems will stop too, when it actually can take months to recover. I suffered both physically and emotionally for four months. It was the most terrifying experience; even the weight loss part because nobody should lose weight that fast. Having the runs sucked, but the worst part was definitely the booming heart and the anxiety. 

Although I have worked through the trauma of those days, the memories are stuck with me forever. Those scary moments actually made the prospect of facing homelessness not as scary. I guess it’s different when the trauma is internal versus external, not that I would ever again want to be raked over the financial coals like we were a few years ago. 

As well as things are going now, I miss the days twenty-five years or so ago when death and dying weren’t a concern for me as it is now that I’m older. Oh, I had my share of problems back then, mind you, but I didn’t worry about dying so much. Perhaps that’s because I had yet to actually live. 

Memories flash through my mind in a blur… me suddenly running to the phone as my heart starts booming… my fingers shakily trying to dial the paramedics… me scrambling on shaky legs to at least get the door open, not knowing what was going on or if I would live or die. 

Relief flooding through me as the paramedics show up… confusion also rushing through me as I am hooked to a cardiogram… questions being fired at me, an otherwise healthy runner who does dozens of push-ups, ab crunches, doesn’t smoke or have a serious weight problem. 

So now I not only know what happened to me last year, but what happened to me has a name… thyrotoxicosis. 

Going to grab something to eat now, but I don’t know what. I only know I’ve had enough potatoes. You never know if there’s such a thing as potatotoxicosis!