Hashi-wha-ti-moto?

I'm pretty sure I'm the only person I know who was excited about turning 30. I honestly was...I'm not crazy; my life just seems to get better with time. Well, since I turned 30 in March life has handed us some lemons...and some medical issues.

After Mike and I got engaged, I started feeling not quite right. I blamed the change in my job, the wedding stress, the stress of getting/being married...house payments (plural), deciding where to live, the cost of the wedding, and on and on. The list of "ailments" was getting quite lengthy, but I honestly just thought it was life....or married life.

When I went in to have my IUD removed last March (2009), I told my (now former) OB/Gyn my list...he didn't seem to think there was any real problem. He removed my IUD and pretty much told me good luck starting my family. I asked him if I could have my blood drawn to give me baseline TSH levels. My three older sisters have thyroid issues and the onset was after pregnancy. I thought I would be proactive and see what my numbers were before pregnancy...thinking I would have a much easier time regulating myself if/when I had a thyroid issue after pregnancy. My doctor signed the order and told me he'd let me know if anything was abnormal. I continued to feel not quite right...and I continued to not be pregnant every month.

After 12 months of not conceiving, we made an appointment with my OB/Gyn. We were very unhappy with his "plan" for our infertility issues, but I think I already mentioned that here. He had me do another blood draw to test my TSH levels...just in case. If you're hypo- the body doesn't normally ovulate. I didn't think anything of it because I had them done 12 months prior and everything was normal...or so I thought.

When I never received a call saying my TSH levels were abnormal, I assumed they were normal...and whatever was wrong with me was mental. About a week after my second blood draw I received a phone call from a nurse in my doctor's office...she said my TSH level was too high at 6.44. I asked her what normal was and she told me 0.5 - 4.5/5.0. Hmm...I asked her what my test results were from a year ago and she told me 4.578.

WHAT!? I was so angry. If the high end of normal is 4.5/5.0....I'd say anything over a 4.5 is too high. After reading about it...and now talking to our fertility doctor and my endocrinologist, for my age anything over 2.5 is considered too high. I should be closer to a 1.

I quickly made an appointment with Richelle's endocrinologist, Dr. Dwivedi and started on a prescription for synthroid from by OB/Gyn until the endocrinologist could see me. After my appointment with him, I was pretty discouraged. He had me do another blood draw and we spoke for about 20 minutes. He made me feel quite a bit more comfortable, but he didn't sound very optimistic about my thyroid...based on family history.

The next day Dr. Dwivedi called me and told me his assumptions were correct: I have what they call Hashimoto's disease. Richelle has it too. This disease is an autoimmune disease that basically "antibodies react against proteins in the thyroid gland, causing gradual destruction of the gland itself, and making the gland unable to produce the thyroid hormones the body needs." (about.com) The good news he shared with me was that my TSH levels were already down from 6.44 to 1.8, so we were on the right track.