If ‘they’ won’t look after you, then take charge yourself!

I have been working through the labels ME/CFS/Hashimotos Thyroiditis/Lazy/ Demented/
Old Woman/Incontinent/Nocturia/Dry Skin/ Wounds that would not heal for so long that I forget what I have achieved and I do me ‘I’.

At first my GP would not agree that I had a low thyroid, as the ‘blood tests show you are normal’. I had all the symptoms and if I had presented them to a Dr in the Victorian age I’d have been given a pigs thyroid sandwich – and cured.
Modern Drs rely on what blood tests tell them and also what the pharmaceutical companies tell them that they can prescribe, via government backing of course.
Eventually I got a phone call from my GP telling me that my blood tests were low and that they had better start me on Thyroxine (T4) before I went into a coma. Well that was reassuring seeing as I dragged myself out of bed, went to work, fed myself on cakes and diet drinks to give me some supposed energy and then came home and went to bed as I was too tired to make a drink or meal. I was showering maybe once a week as I could not stand up long enough.
Yes, the situation was so bad that I kept on hassling and hassling till I got to see an endocrinologist who decided to up my dose of T4. I believed the NHS would get me well. Great I thought and for a few weeks I felt a bit better. Then the symptoms returned, so back for another meeting and I was given more and more T4.
No one mentioned to me that just maybe your body is not accepting T4 as it is an inactive hormone. Maybe it will poison you. Maybe you need something else.
At least not till I researched and found that perhaps I was not getting better but actually worse was because

• my body could not process T4 and turn it into T3
• my adrenal glands had now been impacted and needed desperate help too
• my whole body had gone out of balance with low levels of B12 making me appear ‘demented and fit for an old folks hospital bed’ as my Dr suggested
• my vitamin D3 was depleted and causing all the extra pain I was feeling.

I sought help from Dr Barry Durrant Peatfield and just when I needed that help at the most critical time, it came to me.

I went into Hashimotos Toxicocis – my whole body was poisoned by an overdose of T4. I couldn’t think, walk, talk, breathe. I just wanted it to end and then at that most desperate time I took a phone call that saved my life.
It was Dr Peatfield’s secretary who found me on the line weeping and devastated, unable to string two words together. She spent 40 minutes telling me what was wrong, what I needed to do and that she was sorry but I had to wait 2 months before I could see Dr Peatfield (he works as a naturopath as he was encouraged to leave the NHS because of his willingness to listen to and correctly treat thyroid patients).
I came off T4 and allowed the toxins to come out of my body and even though I was still desperately ill, I knew I was doing the right thing as my body started to open up and have life again.

Two months later and we started the treatment programme, supporting my adrenals, my thyroid with T3 and a small amount of T4 and supplementing vitamins B, especially B12, Vitamin D3, Vitamin C, co-enzyme Q10, DHEA, Selenium, Ashwaghanda, calcium and Serenity cream containing progesterone.

At this stage it was all about me taking control of my illness and working to get better. The NHS had let me down and nearly killed me off and yet I still had to try to work with them!
I’ve managed to get T3 on the NHS and whilst the dose is low, my life is still impacted, at least now I believe I have hope.

Then….My last appointment was October 2012 and I was to be reassesed in Feb 2013. Only to ring up now, early March 2013 to be told it won’t be till June!

So the impact is that I’m not able to return to my job, the delay means it is even further into the future that I can get there, so work have dismissed me. End of a 35 year-long carear just because

• the NHS delayed in my initial diagnosis
• upped my medicine without warning that it may poison me
• didn’t react when I was poisoned
• treated me as a demented old woman
• took 5 months before they eventually submitted me for another referral
• refused to write a letter to my company to protect my job
• delayed my next appointment by another 4 months.

So back to ‘I’. It’s not just me. It’s been wonderful support from my partner. Amazing help from my Osteopath. Dr Peatfield and his colleagues. My friends, a huge thanks for your continuing love, support and encouragement. My local health shop for all the great things you stock and order in for me.

People say my motto should be the ‘do it woman’. Without that attitude and belief that I will have a healthy life, then maybe my story would have ended a while ago.
Now I’m looking forward to a new chapter and it’s exciting.

So what can you do today to ‘just do it’ towards where you want to be?