"I told you I was ill."

It's Friday the 13th today, as I'd realised before heading off this morning to see my GP for the results of a blood test. The pharmacist pointed out the date as well, but the curse had already struck by then, and the phrase above, from Spike Milligan's gravestone, has been ringing around my head all day.

I don't normally write on here about my health issues, partly because (a) I don't have many, (b) they're personal and (c) I don't want to be some kind of whingeing Dot Cotton hypochondriac character. However, I'll make an exception now, because - cue the melodrama! - I've had a shock today and my life has changed forever. It may also help someone else if I share my story.

I've been ill, you see. I've had sinusitis for nearly four weeks now. I haven't had a cold, but the sinusitis has been painful at times and the worst thing of all has been the chronic fatigue. I saw my GP three days into it and was prescribed antibiotics (Amoxycillin) which I took for a week. They didn't work at all, so I asked for a second week's worth of tablets and finished them without them having any effect either. I saw the doctor again. She was understandably reluctant to give me any more antibiotics, so that stopped. We've all had sinusitis as part of a cold, but this feels quite unusual as there's no snot at all, but all the other feelings of having 'flu are present. I have no energy whatsoever and have been sleeping for hours on end, day and night. I had talked with my GP on the first visit about allergy tests, which she was going to do if the antibiotics didn't work, but on the second visit, last Tuesday, she decided to refer me to an ENT surgeon instead. I also had a blood sample taken. When I rang on Monday this week for the blood test results, I thought it was ominous when the receptionist asked me to come in and see the doctor. When it's okay, I'm pretty sure they just say the test didn't find anything; you don't have to waste the doctor's time by taking up an appointment.

In the meantime, due to a misguided sense of loyalty, and because we're short of staff, I had been going to work, but after the second doctor's appointent last week, the blood test itself was enough to send me home to bed, feeling weak, where I slept for the entire afternoon and took the next day off too, whch turned into one big sleep lasting the rest of the week. (The only way I managed to keep my date with Jason Donovan was to stay in bed until Saturday afternoon, get up late and conserve energy until I went out in the evening. I then told anyone who would listen how ill I felt and how I culdn't believe I was out. I'm not sure who believed me, but it was true. I really wasn't going to miss the opportunity to meet him, come hell or high water. That's how sad I am.)

Anyway, I did nothing on Sunday except brace myself for work on Monday. I made it in for my 7am start, still feeling half asleep after driving the ten miles to work, which wasn't particularly safe. I still wasn't breathing properly, so I took a break after three hours to get some fresh air. (We work in a dreadful office where none of the windows can be opened and we are subject to the whims of the aircon system, which are sometimes very random. I find it claustrophobic at the best of times.) I went outside and breathed in the 'fresh' carbon monoxide of the busy dual carriageway on which we work, then sat in the car and nearly dozed off, while reflecting on the fact that only our newest temp had even bothered to ask me how I was. My manager, the woman to whom he has temporarily delegated his managerial responsibilities and two other colleagues had said nothing, which really pissed me off. I sat in the car and was in between tears and nodding off when my manager knocked on the car window. No, actually, he opened the car door without asking and said 'Are you okay?'. 'No, not really.' In short, he said if I couldn't work, I should go home, and he was right, but it was better that he said it and not just me. At least I had gone in and made the effort, even though I felt like death warmed up. I came home at lunchtime, went to bed on Monday afternoon, and have hardly been upright since (oo-er), either in bed or on the settee, covered by a duvet. I keep nodding off, my sinuses are so swollen that I can hardly breathe or hear, and my vision is being affected by the blocked sinuses, so I can't spend much time at the PC as my eyes keep going blurry and I get headaches.

So, this morning, off to see the doctor after being off work since noon on Monday. The results of the blood test reveal something which hadn't crossed my mind at all (partly because, last week, the doctor had only mentioned being tested for anaemia). I have a thyroid deficiency. The moment she said it, it all made sense, as there's a history (indeed, a present) of thyroid problems in both sides of the family, including my Dad and sister. All the pieces have now slotted into place. The sinusitis, which I'm still enduring, is a separate matter, which has only endured because I'm so run down, and will still have to be tackled by an ENT specialist, but the reason I'm run down is a lack of thyroxine, which regulates the metabolism and can cause heart problems if left unchecked. The doctor agreed that this could also explain why I've put on a stone in weight in the last year, which conveniently absolves me, the lack of exercise and the consumption of too many biscuits.

So now I'm on 50MCG thyroxine tablets, starting today. Once the levels are settled, I'll probably be on them for the rest of my life, as the thyroid apparently doesn't recover. My Dad is on 125MCG, my sister on 150MCG, so there may be some way to go yet. My Dad was started off on 200MCG tablets a few years ago, which is much too high to start off with, and had his heart attack shortly afterwards. We think his GP nearly killed him by over-stimulating his thyroid, so I'm quite happy to start off on 50MCG, thank you very much. I've been signed off work for two more weeks. It felt good ringing in to tell them. Not only am I relieved that the doctor has found something wrong, but it vindicates everything I've been telling my manager about feeling tired at work. At last I know I'm not just being lazy, which I've sometimes felt, or going mad. The feelings of cold that I've also had over the last few days are yet another symptom of the hypothyroidism that I now know I have and it all makes sense, even the fact that I didn't go cycling as much this Summer as I did last year, as I often didn't feel I had the energy.

I'm not sure that the correct reaction to being told you have a potentially life-threatening condition is to feel relieved, but that's what I feel today, like the proverbial weight has been lifted from my shoulders. I still feel knackered (and writing this has taken ages), but now I can move on, get the levels of medication settled, learn to live with this...and enjoy two more weeks off work!

Here's my family tree (created on very high-tech genealogy software, as you can see), which shows the prevalence of thyroid and heart problems in my family. I didn't stand a chance of escaping it really, did I?



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