1. Thyroid Series - Symptoms

So - for the first thyroid post in the series I thought I'd focus on symptoms.

This link http://www.stopthethyroidmadness.com/long-and-pathetic/ is to a very comprehensive list, which is helpful-ish, but I think the top 5 are:

1. Struggling with exercise, higher heart rate than normal or higher than others, "spiking" heart rate ie your heart rate used to be 160 for your regular run or cycle and now its spiking to 190 for no reason and you've got a lot of lactic, and post exercise fatigue.
2. Cold hands and feet and being more sensitive to the cold than others, including sudden body temperature drops, often gets worse at night.
3. Needing naps in the afternoon and waking up tired, or struggling to wake up.
4. Unusual or unexplained weight gain - 1 stone/14lbs plus.
5. Constant sore throats and colds.
6. Brain fog/cognitive impairment/struggling to concentrate or do normal tasks.
7. Feeling you can't cope/basic lack of will to get things done, stuff you know needs doing and didn't used to be a chore is now too much. 
8. Pale, think/lumpy, itchy skin.
9. Hair loss/eybrows thinning.
10. Chemical, black hole of hell, depression - not the usual high anxiety state depression most bright people live with.

My experience of the last two were terrifying. To put the brain fog in context, I pulled honors grades at Stanford Law with brain fog and what my idiot endocrinologist at the time called "a little lobotomy" (doubling my thryoid dose because they'd screwed up for the whole term) so quite possibly only you or someone you haven't seen in a while will spot it. But it's awful - I remember vividly being sat in a colleague's office, talking about issues of the current deal and just not being able to wrap my brain around them - when I knew a year ago it would have come easily - the brain just wouldn't go, it was like pushing treacle. Drafting took forever. My brain had just slowed down.

The depression was my last symptom and out of hell. I'd done 3 years of CBT/Jungian therapy sorting the usual stuff out so when the depression hit, shortly after my father died and we were in various family litigations, I went back to my clinic. Who were border-line criminally negligent - no one picked up on the thing I couldn't understand - how had I now become clearly chemically depressed when I'd never been before (most American shrinks would order a thyroid test to be fair) - pushed anti-depressants at me (which I refused to take because I think the efficacy rate is appaling but would have put me in a coma, because they block uptake of T3) and tried to force me to become an in-patient (wouldn't have helped but would have destroyed what was left of my life) - and it was in fighting them and dealing with the litigation that I figured out what was wrong with me to survive - I thankfully come with a "fvck you" gene that fights on general principles, especially pushed into a corner. This was, sat-at-the-end-of-the-bed-having-no-idea-how-to-stand tired, and thinking about stepping in front of the subway/tube each day because it would be easier than going through with my day. I had responsibilities and that's what kept me going in the worst - but this happens when your brain, short of T3 and producing a lot of TSH, stops producing serotonin and endorphins. Get mis-diagnosed with Hashimotos at this point and you might not see the light of day.