So I was sitting here having my coffee and thinking how wonderful it would be if I never needed those rescue pills and then I realized that that would be too easy. Nothing is ever that easy for me. Nothing. 

Sure enough, I get in the shower and lather my hair with shampoo when my heart starts taking off on a mad race and beating hard as well. So I quickly rinsed my hair and jumped out of the shower without conditioning or shaving. I stood stock-still and took slow deep breaths and was able to slow my pulse down rather quickly without having to resort to the beta-blockers. 

I’m glad I was able to stop it so soon but I am very disappointed. Even if my logic told me that nothing should be this easy, especially if you’re me, it is still very discouraging. It makes me fear that the more the 75s build up in my system, the more problems I will have. So now I am not only afraid to work out when Tom is not home, but now I’m afraid to shower when he is not home. :( 

I’m documenting everything that happens and when it happens for my doctor. I just hope there is nothing else going on with me that has been overlooked, though I doubt it. A part of me wishes my endo was reading my blog regularly, but unless she is set up to dodge tracking, nobody in my area is following me, and nobody is that curious about their patient anyway, LOL. 

The good thing is that I don’t feel jittery or any negative emotions nor have I had the runs. Thank goodness I wasn’t on the bike at the time. Tom wonders if the hot shower simply shocked my system since it’s chilly again. I doubt it. The water wasn’t that hot, and if that were the case this would have happened for years. Dr. O said this can happen if you don’t have enough thyroid hormone in your body or if you have too much of it. Well, I certainly don’t have too much of it. Not even close. So I guess this is due to a lack of it. The only question is why I haven’t had this problem for years? My thyroid didn’t crap out on me the day before they diagnosed me with Hashimoto’s. It was a slow, gradual decline that took years. I just hope it doesn’t get worse as my TSH gets lower. As she explained, if I have a pocket of activity in the thyroid, that can cause this. But again, why since last summer and not long before? *sighs warily* I guess these things are destined to haunt me for the rest of my life. :( 

At least I slept better last night. I woke up a few times as usual but was able to go right back to sleep. I dreamed that I was walking down the road in which a penny sat upon every so many yards. I seemed to believe they were used as markers for a movie that was being made. 

In another dream, I was moving from somewhere and I asked a young black guy to store my things for me and his shed so that I would have more room to pack stuff up. Eventually, I gave him a couple of folding chairs but right as he was about to put them in his shed I stopped him and said, ”Never mind. I have plenty of room for those chairs.” 

Later… 

I first want to thank each and every one of my fellow Hashimoto followers who have been reading me and sharing their experiences with me on various blogging sites. Your stories, support and encouragement mean a lot to me, and I am glad if anything I can say helps others as well. Hugs to you all! 

Except for that quick “shower beat down” I feel fine. Just a little tired and discouraged. Tom is so sure that in just a matter of months, I’ll be healthier than I have been in the last decade, and I have been pretty healthy since I quit smoking in 1997. I hope he’s right! My sister says that too, once my body adjusts to the new dose. He said he was 75% sure that it was the shower and going from cold to hot. As he pointed out, things change with time and so our bodies may react in ways they didn’t react years ago. Even my thyroid alone is deader than it was a year ago. Well, I sure wish those bastard antibodies would finish killing it off completely so I don’t have to worry about pocket flares! 

I totally forgot about how the doctor mentioned that while it’s unlikely, there could be something else going on that we don’t know about. I sure hope that’s not the case! That’s the reason I have Tom go in with me; because he remembers what I’m too wound up to remember myself. But yeah, she said that if I ever have a racing heart that doesn’t stop even with the beta-blocker, call her right away and she’ll get me in for blood work. Then they will determine if an MRI is necessary to see if anything else is going on. Again, I really, really hope that’s not the case! I have learned way more than I ever wanted to about the endocrine system, and I don’t want to ever have to learn about some whole new disease until it’s my time to go. Well, at 49 I’m far from ready to go. 

I hope Tom is also right and that I will one day once again be able to go out alone running or biking without being afraid. We always prefer to work out together no matter what, but sometimes our schedules and other things come up and prevent him from going with me. I miss being out there in the middle of the night when all is dead and peaceful, especially during the warmer weather. But the last thing I want is to be a mile away from home at three in the morning when my heart decides to play with me. If I’m working out and then it starts racing, it doubles the speed of the racing. Then if anything causes me to panic I triple it and I certainly don’t want to do that. Sure do miss it, though. I got to know every crack and chip in these roads. I could run ‘em blindfolded. 

I almost feel like something up there is preventing me from fully enjoying my home AND the park, but I am determined to beat it at its own twisted game whether that’s the case or not! Still, where it was mostly money problems in Auburn, it’s health problems here… even if this shit disease probably began in my late 30s to early 40s. 

It isn’t all bad though, because my metabolism seems to have speeded up a bit. Not much but just a little. 

Along with a $500 bill for cutting out my ingrown toenail, my wall sticker silhouette of a figure skater arrived and I placed it on the wall opposite the entry to the kitchen. Another bigger one is on its way and it’s going opposite the laundry room door. 

We were talking about how we’re paying ourselves interest instead of the loan people by taking out loans from the 401K, paying ourselves back, and thus giving us more money for retirement in the end. 

We still have many home improvements we want to do along the way, and Tom said he wondered why some toilets flush faster than others and so he did some research. It has to do with the size of the tube that the flap is attached to. Ours flushes super slow and even Andy noticed that and said he’s never seen a toilet flush like that before. Well, that’s because the tube is really skinny. If you want a fast-flushing toilet that does a better job of flushing everything down, you need a fatter tube that dumps the water into the toilet bowl faster. So that’s something we’ll definitely look for when it comes time to replace these toilets.