On the Path

It's nearly three weeks since I began taking that increased dose of the thyroid-boosting drug and, if I'm honest, nearly three weeks since I began also taking an antidepressant. Who knows whence cometh my help as the Bible says? Will it have come from those loving individuals who reacted to my last post? For sure. Will it have come as well from lifting up my eyes unto those hills that the Psalmist talks about, especially now that their trees have set their petticoats to flouncing? Very likely. And it also seems that the process of paying closer attention to everything outside myself will help. For example: The other night I sat parked next to a 100-foot stretch of bike path that emerges from a wooded glade to create a small ‘stage’ before disappearing back into the foliage. This path passes through a number of towns just north and west of Boston here, so in itself it is far from rural. In fact I found myself beside it in this parking lot because I had just met my grown daughter and her two babies for an early supper. And when I returned to my car afterward, the light of the May evening was just billowing so that I had to pause and watch as an ever-freshening stream of people passed. Here zipped past a whippet-thin cyclist curved like an apostrophe over his handlebars.Now here came an identically dressed brace of young women, high-stepping like a couple of drum majors.Now I watched a man lope by at an easy trot, plugged, like almost everyone I saw, into his ear buds.As I sat I saw that for ten or 15 seconds at a stretch, the path would be empty. And the sky was so blue. And the light was so golden.I watched as an older lady in a sari appeared. She paused as if winded, settled her fists on her hips, and called out repeatedly the name of an unseen child. It was like watching a play, for now, as if on cue, came the long-awaited child, a boy of perhaps five, zooming into sight on his little scooter to describe several small circles around his exasperated companion,  I watched these folks and others for some 25 or 30 minutes. I would have gladly stayed another 30 but the light was now changing, growing both more luminous and more coppery and I knew I didn't want to see it fade.So instead I came home, tucked away the memory and remembered again that as the old Irish adage says, it is in the shelter of each other that the people live - and find freshly, every time, a sense of peace. 

Bouncy No More

I wanted to write something about Mothers Day last week but lately I have felt put off by the idea of even opening up a blank page to create a post, and now it's been over three months. What has happened to me?I had an invitation 30 minutes ago to speak before a journaling group.I turned it down.I turned down two other offers too, in the last months. I'm just so tired of talking, tired of being a person who always speaks up, who thinks it's her job to make it a 'good class' for the people around her, as if I did as a young teacher, eager to make every minute count. These days, I often sit through whole meetings without saying a word. I find I would much rather listen.'And this is OK’ I've told myself. 'It's an ebbing of ego is all, which can only be good'.But now it comes back to me that near the end of my annual visit to my primary care physician last week, she asked me something as she was listening to my heart:"So," she said.  How's the writing?"I was slow to answer. “Well… I know I told you a year ago that I stopped producing the column…”“I remember. But beyond that?”“Beyond that, I.... I.. don't write anymore." The words alone caused me a pang."Oh, that's just writer's block," she said cheerily. “It’ll pass!”I looked down at my lap and remained silent then, leaving her to her tappings and palpatings. It was during that pause in the talk that a memory came back to me of an exchange I had had with some old old friends, my college roommates and co-member of the Class of a Thousand Years Ago, when we travelled to Italy together. Midway through the trip one of them said with a laugh, “So Terr, we just have to ask: What happened to that wicked wit we all remember? You're just sort of ... kind these days,” and laughed again, to show she loved me anyway.Looking up from my lap I related this freshly remembered exchange to my doctor who took the stethoscope from her ears and looked me full in the face.“Are you sleeping?” she asked.“Sure,” I said. “In fact, most days I can hardly get up." And I told how I stay in the bed, awake and looking out the window for 60 or sometimes 90 minutes until my husband gets up.“Listen to me,” she then said. “I get what your classmates meant. For more than two decades, every time you have come in here you've been practically bouncing, in high spirits, and full of stories. These last two visits I haven't seen that. At all. I think we have to consider the possibility that you have dysthymia, a term for chronic low-grade depression.”Normally I would have laughed, the way I did back in the 90s when she told me my bloodwork revealed hypothyroidism. "Hypothyroidism?” I had said. “What are the symptoms?” We looked up the condition on her computer and she swung the monitor around so I could see. “Low energy, sadness, sleep issues,” it read, along with 40 other unhappy signposts.I was almost offended at the time. “But you know me! “ I said back then. “Does my busy life sound as if it comes with any of these symptoms? And now you’re saying I have to take a pill every day for the rest of my life? What happens if I don't?”“If you don’t, you’re facing all of this and more,” she'd replied, indicating the screen.So, these 25 years later, I take the Levoxyl, which is no big deal. Last Friday though, the bloodwork from this latest visit came back, indicating that my level of need has increased. She has upped my dosage therefore and I guess we’ll see. Either that does the trick or  I'll need additional help.In the meantime I want to aplogize to any of you out there who have been wondering if I'm still here. I'm here. And from now on I'll be taking some advice I learned from the Recovery movement and fake it til I make it, which means,  “performing actions that are known to be positive even if one is not necessarily comfortable with them.” In other words “the mind may be willing, but the emotions may not be there yet.”I’ll do that now. I'll fake it 'til I make it. I'll try just ‘showing up’ which, after all, is what most people do every day, whether they feel like it or not.         

Hashimoto's to You, Hashimoto's to You, Hashimoto's Dear Terry...

So I got totally yelled at here for taking those two Tylenol PM at 6am the other day but hey it was a mistake. Truth is, I'm super-sensitive to all drugs. When I drink a glass of wine I can feel the very first sip whanging into my brain in less then 60 seconds. When I began on birth control pills I could have told you six ways my body felt different within the first 48 hours.

Doctors always ask you what medications you take every day and I used to be so proud of myself : "Just Chapstick,” I'd say. "A little gets in my mouth when I smear it on in the morning." But then one day my blood work came back and my PCP who is very smart and cool and is a doctor at Mass General OK? and wears gorgeous suits and high heels to work every day said that I had Hashimoto's Disease, or under-active thyroid but not to worry because like 50% of all women over 45 have it too.

"I don’t have that, what are the symptoms?" I replied.

“Your mental processes slow down, you have no energy, you gain weight, you're depressed..."

"“DO YOU EVEN KNOW ME?" I practically yelled. “I’m not like that!"

“You will be if you don’t take Levothyroxine," she smiled.

So I take it, dammit. I take my 75mcg a day but five years in I'm still not happy about it. In fact I said as much to my girl Annie just the other day.

"Hashimoto's, yeah, the disorder that makes you cold, slow, sad, fat and stupid!" She knew all about it “Hey come on. I can’t WAIT for them to tell ME I have that. I’ll go on the drug and then boom! warm, fast, happy, thin, smart!”

She’s a funny one that Annie. Members of my family have spent decades saying things to me like “Wait, you’re going to give writing classes in prisons?” but Annie was never one of them. She works as an assistant Project Manager 50 hours a week AND became a professional chef a couple of years ago and so also works for Niche Catour, the catering entity owned by Boston’s award-winning No. 9 Park owner and chef Barbara Lynch (hey it's a link - click it!) – AND in September she starts grad school at Harvard and has no intention of quitting either of these other two things so you know? The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

But hey, fat thin smart dumb whatever: I’m toasting this nice June day with my thyroid meds and my Chapstick. And better yet Annie’s here with us today and she says she feels like cooking!