I have great news, okay news, and shitty news. Where should I start? I guess I'll go in order from great to shitty.

The amazingly shocking and great news is that my TSH is 5.50! Just one point above normal! “I can’t handle a TSH in the normal range” may one day not be a true statement after all. Maybe it would have been this time if I hadn’t accidentally screwed up a few times by eating too soon or taking a melatonin gummy within the half-hour range. I was stunned out of my mind.

This is the first time I altered fate, in a sense. I knew that dream was a warning where Rhonda wanted me to increase my dose. But I jumped on it by increasing my vitamin D, and I stopped it! I stopped it. I literally stopped it! If only I could control other aspects of my life.

Tom was right when he said I had conflicting symptoms and didn’t think my thyroid would be that out of whack. Now that I think about it, some things make more sense. When my thyroid is better, it doesn’t make me lose weight, but it makes it harder to gain. If my TSH was way up in the teens or twenties, I likely would be in the 160s, struggling to keep from gaining more and more weight. Also, I’ve always had thick curls but when gathering it back in a ponytail lately, I’ve noticed it feels thicker. In fact, this long, thick, curly mane is getting to be such a pain in the ass to care for that I’m almost tempted to cut it off again. So many women out there would love this problem, and you know what? They can have it! Live with it as long as I have, and it gets kind of old. To avoid combing through the sea of wild curls all the time, I often braid it.

The news that’s just so-so is that my A1C is down but only by a point—it’s 5.9. I’d like to push it down another three points, but I don’t know if I can. I didn’t realize this at first, but she’s also running some tests on my liver that aren’t done yet. I don’t expect any problems there.

The shitty news is that I continue to sleep absolutely shitty as fuck. I am so run down and tired now. My brain and body have been taking a beating for decades as the years of sleep disturbances add up. I wonder how much more it can take before I have a stroke or heart attack. I worry about landing in the hospital because of this shit. It’s absolutely horrible.

I’ve also had that feeling again where I feel short of breath, even though my lungs aren’t exactly tight. I wrote that off to nerves, but since that’s not a common symptom of being wound up for me, it makes me wonder if it’s connected to my TSH pushing down, though I doubt it. I’m definitely going to skip the vitamin D for a few days because I don’t want to overdo it. Salmon is high in vitamin D, and I had some today, so it may be another day before it starts draining from my system.

The question is—what’s making me so cold at times? I looked that up and found a long list of possibilities, so maybe it’s just age.

Seriously, though, last night was absolutely horrible. I was so close to just grabbing the bag of charcoal, sealing myself up in the bathroom, and ending my suffering once and for all. In frustration, I smashed the shit out of my forearm, leaving bruises. Not with any sharp instruments, just with my fist. I was just so frustrated and didn’t want to break anything by throwing or punching things.

My sleep was broken up twice, and each time, I only slept for an hour or two. The last time I tried to get back to sleep, I felt short of breath and couldn’t quite make it fully back to sleep. That’s when I realized there was more going on than my nose issues. The first time I was woken up last night had nothing to do with breathing issues; my shoulder was screaming in pain. Just when I think that’s getting better, it gets me again.

The second and third times, I felt like I couldn’t suck in enough air, even though I could take the same amount of breath through my nose with the strip on as I could with my lungs. That’s when I started to wonder about my lungs.

I had this weird dream I went to the dentist. It seemed like the hygienist was Holly, and I was going to get my teeth cleaned. For some crazy reason, I had to take my shirt off before lying down in the chair.

So I took my shirt off and realized I didn’t have a bra on, so I was embarrassed. I casually rested my arms across my chest to hide my breasts when I lay back in the chair. Then they were having some computer tech issues, and I offered to reschedule and come back another time.

Holly agreed that would be a good idea and hugged me goodbye. But the only reason I wanted to get out of there and return another time was because I had forgotten my bra when I got dressed earlier, lol.

Then I went into the waiting room and spotted Tom at the back of it. It was pretty crowded, so I wove my way through the people waiting, but by the time I got to the back, he had disappeared. Managing to get home on my own, I was looking out the window of what appeared to be an apartment. Just to the right, I could see they’d dug out a square section of land to build another apartment building.

I then called Tom to ask where he had disappeared when he accused me of taking off because I had something to hide. Other than my chest, I assured him I wasn’t trying to hide anything. There was also something about him being upset that we didn’t get some things we needed after moving somewhere, saying that if he knew it was going to take that long, he’d do it himself.

Mixed reality rocks! I love that app where a little spaceship crashes through your ceiling and drops into the center of your room, and a bunch of “puffians” explode from it that you have to shoot. Bits and pieces of the shot-out walls and ceiling drop onto the furniture and floor, and the puffians climb everywhere—the walls, lamps, chairs, couch, etc. It was just amazing and so real-looking!

And now it's time for German practice...