A life-changing disease named Graves

I'll start off by introducing myself. My name is Estella, most people call me Stella and I'm 29 years old. I don't claim to be the best writer in the world, and I know I'm not grammatically correct all the time, either. I'm doing this as a therapeutic outlet, so enjoy, and feel free to give me your input.

I have been married to my best friend for almost six years. We added a new addition to our family in the summer of 2009. We had a beautiful baby girl and we named her Yazmin.

All was well until the summer of 2010, one year after having my child. I began experiencing horrible panic attacks, to the point where I would call my mother in the middle of the night to either come over or just calm me down over the phone, because I felt like I was going to die, literally! My panic attacks would begin with me not being able to swallow, my neck would get all tight and all of a sudden, I couldn't breath. Next thing you know, I was laying down, holding on to my chest because it felt like my heart was going to beat out of my chest, yes, very scary!

You're probably wondering, why didn't she just call on her husband, her best friend? Well, he works for the railroad and they have very strict rules about talking on cell phones while the train is moving, so I'll go up to 12 hours without being able to make contact with my husband.

So it went from panic attacks in July of 2010 to elevated heart rate and heart palpitations and high blood pressure in August 2010. In September, I was taking a picture of myself, as I often do, just to see how I look, I know it's silly, but on this particular day, I'm glad I did. I noticed one of my eyes was bigger than the other. I about flipped! I didn't think anything of it, I just figured I needed to switch up the way I slept, so I started trying to lay on the opposite side that I normally sleep on, because that was just my dumb logic. Little did I know, it had to do with my Graves Disease.

I lived with anxiety/panic attacks and elevated heart rate until December of the same year. I decided to make an appointment to see my doctor, but it had to be after my birthday, December 4th, because I just didn't want it to ruin my night. I went to see my primary care physician on December 10th, 2010. I explained to her everything I have told you above, and the weird eye situation. Oh, did I mention I was always tired and my hair was falling out? Yeah, that was another symptom, sorry, that was kind of sporadic but I had to add that as well. Okay, back to my doctor's visit, I went in to see my doc and she ran some blood tests and also said I needed to have a scan.

She diagnosed me with Graves Disease and now I was having a scan done to see if I had thyroid cancer. Really? Are you serious? I'm 29, just had my baby a year and a half ago and now you're telling me I may have thyroid cancer! I was very scared, but did some research and found out that if you're going to have cancer, thyroid cancer would be the one to have, just because it's the most treatable kind of cancer. That was a bit relieving to me, but I was still scared.

So let's fast forward a couple of months. Scan went well, I left my primary doctor to see a specialist, an endocrinologist, and have been on meds for almost three months. My levels are slowly coming down and I hope to be at a stabilization point in June. That's my next appointment with my endocrinologist. I guess the only good thing about Graves is that I was losing weight no matter what I ate *big smiley face* but now that I'm on meds to slow down my entire body, well, my metabolism has slowed as well. *giant sad face*

So, I'm trying to get stabilized, and now the debate is, do we want more children? There are a lot of things that could go wrong if I were to have a child. My Graves could go back into full swing and it could lead to serious heart problems, including congestive heart failure! The baby could also develop an abnormal thyroid and either have hypo or hyper(which is what I have) Very scary. So, I know this is my first blog, and it's a little deep, but I just thought this would be the most therapeutic way of dealing with it.

Thanks for listening and I'm sure I'll be blogging more about the last issue.