Joyful Giovedi?

Well no, not quite, but at least I'm feeling well enough this evening to write a blog post.

After plumbing the depths of an underactive thyroid yesterday, I decided to take matters into my own hands. It's almost a matter of survival really - when feeling as tired as I did yesterday, I'm literally good for nothing. It's a hard feeling to explain, and when it first happened to me last year, it completely redefined my idea of what tiredness actually is. Prior to that I used the word 'tired' as I did 'starving' - inappropriately. Turns out, I'd never been either. The word is often over used and its meaning therefore diluted. Yesterday, though, I was TIRED! It's not only the physical inability to put one foot in front of the other, but a mental thing too - it's like that fog you have in your head for the first minute after waking up, brain barely firing, and when it does it misfires, the connections aren't correct and it takes a while to feel 'with it', but by the time breakfast is over most people are functioning and feel 'human'. Well, my experience of an underactive thyroid means that the exact same mental fog stays with me for every waking minute - and for days at a time. This, combined with a tiredness that goes right to my core (even the simple act of walking is a huge effort) renders me utterly useless, and the thought of attempting anything, no matter how small, seems like a Mt Everest to climb, an impossible task. All I want to do is to close my eyes and see if I wake up feeling any better the next day - and the frustration of being unable to do anything soon brings on some dark moods too, so all in all it's a fairly unpleasant situation.

So, for now, I'm playing doctor and I've upped my meds, to a dosage I was on for a couple of months before, but was told it was too high. Desperate times call for desperate measures and a couple of months at a higher dosage isn't going to kill me (while being useless for a couple of months might just do that!). We've started the residency ball rolling properly now, so we are hoping that it won't be too long before we can have access to a GP, and in addition, we have it on good authority that there is an excellent thyroid clinic in Pisa. I don't think such a thing exists in the UK, so a visit there could be on the cards.

Helen went out to exercise as usual this morning. I was completely unaware of her getting up, but when she came back in at around 8.30am, she said that Florence had been doing her best to stop her from exercising, and that she'd spent the last 20 minutes pinned to her exercise mat with a very purry, cuddly cat on her lap! I'm not sure what's up with Florence today - she hasn't been the most forthcoming with her lap affections since arriving, so why she chose the middle of Helen's workout to have some cuddles is a mystery. Maybe she's just trying to tell her to slow down.

'I'm NOT moving'.

A far better use of time.

Stuck! How could you disturb that happy little slumbering cat?!

After I awoke from my slumber I went downstairs for breakfast having had my first increased dose of medication a few hours earlier. I still felt very tired, but it was a definite small improvement over yesterday, which was good news!

After removing a small scorpion (around 4-5cm)  from the bath:

I went outside to see how physical labour was going to work out. The fact I could even entertain the idea was encouraging, and lifted my mood, but I was still way under par. I managed to push tools and grass around until 11.30am, when I hit the wall so retreated to the house, feeling a bit drown trodden.

After lunch, we both went into the office: Helen returned to her conference papers and I decided to attempt the translation of our birth certificates in preparation for our residency appointment in a couple of weeks. A good chunk of the fog in my head had lifted, so I felt confident that I would be able to hold a thought for long enough to complete this task.

A few hours later, certificates translated and other bits collated with them in a folder ready for our meeting, I was feeling a bit brighter and was pleased to have done something of use for the first time since Monday.

An hour or so later, Helen clocked out of the office for the day and we retired to the patio for a glass of cold beer. I even managed something vaguely resembling conversation this evening, so things are definitely on the up - a coincidence that I've increased meds today? I've no idea. Let's see how another 48 hours go.