thyroid Leave a comment

Life With Half A Thyroid: Month Ten

Self-portrait showing my head and shoulders. I'm wearing a boat-neck sweater that shows off my light-pink thyroid scar.

My follow-up visits with the Nurse Practitioner at endocrinology following my thyroid surgery were unremarkable, which is a good thing. She’d look at my lab work, palpate my neck, ask me about symptoms, and declare me good to go until the next follow-up.

My most recent visit was with the actual endocrinologist. My most recent lab work showed a significant spike in my Thyroid Stimulating Hormone (TSH), while my T4 levels remained on the low end of normal. Since I’d already gotten an education in how hormones work when I went through menopause, I suspected that the higher levels of TSH were a sure sign that I’d be put on thyroid medication — if not now, then eventually.

As suspected, he prescribed a low dose of levothyroxine. Now that I’m already on Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) for estrogen, adding another hormone to the regime doesn’t seem as daunting as it once did. In fact, I’m looking forward to seeing if it lessens any of the symptoms that could be attributable to my thyroid.

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randomness Leave a comment

Excerpts from my Teams Chats

It occurred to me recently that one big reason why I don’t blog about the day-to-day stuff so much anymore is because I share these things as they happen with my work-BFF over Teams, my long-distance-BFF over iMessage, or my husband.

So, here’s a recap of some of the things I sent to N over the course of last week:

Tuesday 10/8 8:39 AM:

So, on my home laptop, I’ve been beta testing a productivity app called Foreground that logs all of your app activity (locally only!) and lets you categorize it and tag it as productive, neutral, or distracting. The full release just dropped, and I bought it with my beta-tester discount and installed it on my work machine. 🙂

What’s interesting to me is that [our manager]’s swag at 5 hours of actual work time per day is currently pretty spot-on for me.

I only have one day of data, but I think this is going to be a good reminder to find something productive to do while my [Power BI semantic] models are taking 15-20 minutes to refresh…

Wednesday 10/9 10:52 AM:

Can I also mention that I still hate when people keep their entire signature on replies, so that their sig is literally ten times as long as their one-liner email?

Friday 10/11 8:10 AM:

Connor became aware of “Whatchoo talkin’ ’bout, Willis?” so I found a supercut of just scenes with that line to show him last night. He thought it was much more hysterical than I thought he would. 😄 And now I have the Diff’rent Strokes theme song stuck in my head this morning.

Friday 10/11 8:50 AM:

Yesterday at Krav, one of the karate moms who had joined Krav but been absent for a while came back to class. Her new baby is now 5 months old, so she’d ready to come back and train again. There had been a little bit of turnover in class since her time away, but not enough on its own to justify the fact that she kept wanting to be my partner ALL THE TIME. Which was awesome for me — made me feel like she knew I was a safe space. 🥰

pets, snapshots Leave a comment

Daily Kitty Routine

Baxter is displeased at the change of seasons. After Connor gets on the bus in the morning, I now spend some time before work in the family room instead of the sunroom, since the sun is barely up and it’s pretty chilly out there. Some days, I open the sliding door just a crack to let Baxter decide for himself that 58F is too cold for sunroom time.

I’ve also been letting him smurgle my super-soft Pusheen hoodie once I log on for work, and that seems to satisfy him well enough.

spondylolisthesis, weight loss Leave a comment

Chiropractic FTW

Years ago, my chiropractor diagnosed me with spondylolisthesis, plus a bulging disc. I’ve been visiting her once a month for some 13 years now, to keep things healthy and make sure nothing gets too far out of whack.

Last month, I had four visits to the chiropractor’s office in just over a week, thanks to my disc pressing on a nerve and giving me the worst back pain I’ve experienced in a very long time. Since the chiropractor I normally see is semi-retired now and is only available on certain days of the week, I got to see two of the other docs at the practice. They were both just as helpful as my usual doc would have been, and got me back to normal pretty quickly.

Side note: It’s interesting how different people have different styles of chiropractic manipulation. I especially like my chiropractor’s niece, who is now in charge of the day-to-day management of the practice.

At my regularly scheduled visit earlier this week, my usual doc explained that the constant tension that’s cropped up in a new spot on my lower back is due to my right glute being in spasms. I’ve been instructed to massage the ever-loving hell out of it, preferably with a tennis ball. She also advised me that the stronger my glutes are, the healthier my back will be overall.

I suspect that my increased number of back issues lately is due to my weight and my loss of general muscle tone. If I needed a “why” with a sense of urgency in order to focus on my physical health, I think this is a good one. I miss the days when my back didn’t hurt all the time.