It all started in December 2010. Christmas Day, in fact. My husband and I had a little gathering of friends who had no family in town at our house. After everyone left, we were tired and went to bed early (8pm!). About an hour later, I went to the bathroom feeling ill. I called for my husband and by the time he got there I was passed out on the floor. I stayed that way for about a minute. When I came to, I felt really awful. My heart was beating irregularly and I couldn't stand up. After about an hour I was able to sit outside and get some fresh air. When I got back in bed to go back to sleep, I knew something was still wrong. My heart was still beating the slightest bit irregularly.
After that incident, I did not go to the doctor or hospital because I did not have health insurance and could not afford to. I felt what I thought was fine after, and thought it was just an isolated thing. As time passed though, I started to notice things about my body that I had never noticed before. Most obviously, I became extremely sensitive to caffeine. Working in the coffee industry in Seattle, I was used to consuming up to 4 shots of espresso a day. All of a sudden, caffeine would make my heart race and my hands shake. Sometimes I felt nauseous. I started decreasing my caffeine, and by the end of January 2011 was drinking only decaf. At this point, I went home to California to visit my mom, who was worried about my fainting episode in December and took me to see a doctor. He had a full blood workup done and checked my heart, and said I was perfectly healthy.
At this point I was starting to experience heart palpitations when I was lying down to go to sleep. Looking back I thought that my heart was racing, but in retrospect I think that it was just a sharp increase in blood pressure and sometimes and irregular heartbeat. These heart problems would go in waves, sometimes for weeks at a time occurring every night and then disappearing completely for some time. Sometimes they were so bad I wondered if it was possible for me to have a heart attack in my sleep. I thought about going to a Cardiologist, but I was afraid that they would repeat what the other doctor had told me (that I was healthy).
This went on for a few more months, and usually I would just try to ignore it. One day I did some online research, and the only thing I could come up with was Hashimotos Disease. I remember the first time I came across it, I had to stop looking because I did not want that to be what was wrong with me! I started to pay more attention to my whole body symptoms and noticed that I would also go through phases with lots of joint pain, bloating, tiredness, cold hands and feet, and extreme weight fluctuation. I also started to take my temperature in the morning and was shocked to find that my waking temperature was around 93-94 degrees.
Looking online, I really could not find many natural treatments for my symptoms that I could administer myself except for diet changes. I read that people had a lot of success when eliminating gluten and dairy with Hashimotos. I have been off of dairy for almost 10 years after discovering a severe allergy to it in my teens, so it would just be going off of gluten for me. I tried this and within two weeks a lot of my symptoms were less intense, but still there.
Around this time, I obtained health insurance through my husband's company. I decided to see a naturopath that was covered by the insurance in July 2011. I had to fill out two-hours worth of paperwork to give him information about my body and symptoms. In my first visit, he told me he suspected a thyroid problem as well as some nutritional deficiencies and ordered blood work. I also did a bunch of home tests to test ph, bowel transit time, basal body temperature, daily temperature curve, and hydrochloric acid. In my second visit, we went over the results of the blood work. My TPO Antibodies were 182, which indicated Hashimotos. My TSH was 3.8 (What he called a high normal) and Free T3 1.8 (low). I also went from having high iron to extremely low iron (anemic) in 6 months since my last blood test. We also discovered a lot of digestive issues and body temperature issues from the tests I did at home after my first appointment.
At this point, he suggested dealing with my digestion/gut and anemia before tackling the thyroid issue. He suggested a 3 week liver detox in conjunction with an elimination diet to find out about more food allergies. He also put me on iron supplements and gave me a shot of B12 (My blood test levels were average, but since I have been vegan for 10 years he told me that it might give me energy, and it did help for about a week).
The liver detox was great. It was a powder of pea and rice protein along with herbs to stimulate the liver to detox. I was supposed to make a shake of that along with a fruit/vegetable superfood powder, a fiber supplement (I think the main ingredient was ground flax), and liquid fish oil (totally not vegan, but i'm willing to make compromises for my health at this point). I also took chloraphyll, probiotics, and pancreatic enzymes with every shake. The plan called for starting with one smoothie meal replacement a day, ramping up to three times a day and tapering back down to one a day until it is over. In addition to the shakes, you can eat as much as you want of foods not on the "suspected allergen list" (gluten, potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, soy, peanuts, etc) and also foods you think you may be allergic to. Also, you were not allowed caffeine or alcohol.
So this brings me to where I am right now. I just finished the detox this week, and feel so much improvement in my digestion/elimination I can't believe it. I have also been taking iron supplements for almost a month now, and my waking body temperature has been steadily increasing. I am in the challenge phase of the elimination diet, and its been really discouraging because I have had bad reactions to all grains besides rice and then soy. I still have a lot of hypo and hyper symptoms, but the intensity of them has steadily decreased (I am attributing this to eliminating gluten from my diet, it has been a little over a month now).
Sometimes I feel overwhelmed with all of the information out there and wonder if I can get my body to a healthier state than I am in right now. I know that I caught this early and that I am healthy compared to a lot of people with this disease, but I don't know how I could go on knowing that the rest of my life will be like this. Mostly, the lack of balance is driving me crazy, but I am slowly accepting the fact that my body is going to be out of whack for a while, if not forever.
