hashimoto's disease

the last few days, since friday night [which included an awesome group reading of Omnidawn authors by the way] so only 2 days now, i've felt normal-to-great and have slept insanely well so i'm fairly convinced i have to take Fatigued to Fantastic daily or else i'm gonna be screwed. i noticed a few tiny surges in pulse and swelling of thyroid gland post-sugar consumption... otherwise felt pretty great.

the sun helps.

and being in it.

still, major artist's/writer's block happening which is unusual for me. perhaps because we are having a huge generative push at work and my writing brain is dedicated to work right now. the rest of my brain is dedicated to figuring out how to live well with hashimoto's.

hashimoto's disease

i think i've figured out that i need to get plenty of selenium in order to avoid the heart palps, etc during these increased thyroid hormone production times. when i take Fatigued to Fantastic, no heart palps and good sleep. when i don't, and god forbid i eat out, nightmare day.

nightmare days mean i can't write or exercise like i want to. i can't sleep well or want to sleep all the time.

i'm on 88 mcg of tirosint now and i think i am tolerating it okay. my last blood tests showed my THS at 2.5, which is great... down from 3.8. no signs of hyperthyroidism. just the iodine-hashimoto's caused hyper-like symptoms. i'm aiming for my ths to be between 1 and 2.

it has been an extremely frustrating time and the internet has a lot of bad information on it. one thing i've learned is: my thyroid is in its final throes and it is making life a little rough. sometimes it sputters into action and then i get a little too much thyroid hormone (because of the natural thyroid production and my daily synthetic)... and sometimes i feel like i'm not getting enough.

i've lost 8 of the 40 pounds i gained while begging my doctors to check my thyroid. it isn't melting off (8lbs in 3 months)... and sometimes i gain some pounds back for some reason. i cut out gluten and most dairy products and that has helped, too.

the tricky thing about being on medication has been knowing what GOOD and even GREAT feels like again and constantly having the feeling ripped away because of a sputtering thyroid or a heavy dose of iodine (because of eating at restaurants usually)... i still hope to feel 100% myself again one day but i'm definitely frustrated with the process.

hashimoto's disease

so far iodine is my biggest enemy.

i feel so sick.

lump in throat, dizzy, heart palpitations...

i want to puke.

new work

a little bit of the novel i've been working on can be read over at horse less review along with work from Paige Taggart, Jess Rowan, Curtis Perdue, Jesse Morse, Rob MacDonald, Valerie Loveland, Mike Gross, Kit Frick, Megan Burns, Maurice Burford, Ark Codex, Stephanie Anderson, Kimberly Alidio, and Kristin Abraham. Cover art by Dagan McClure-Sikkema.


also, ca conrad was kind enough to put  a video of me reading from fault tree in his jupiter 88 series .


i'll also have some new poems in Phoebe out soon.


i guess i'm still writing, eh?