Mental health and Physical Health

So anyone who has read my old mental health posts might, ok, is PROBABLY sick of hearing me at this point....but oh well. Its obviously something that is near and dear to my heart and to far too many people that I love, so I will keep banging this proverbial drum.  This time with a different twist- I promise.

So I have been notably gone from blogging, social media and most face to face contact with those outside of my inner circle.  It has been a challenging two and a half years for me and I just couldn't face anyone and have to have a discussion about what has changed in my life.  Before I delve right into it, lets just back up for one second.

In December 2012 I had a full hysterectomy due to a cancerous tumor on my left ovary and it had spread into my uterus as well.  I was fortunate enough that I just had to have one surgery and a bunch of follow up scans and blood work done to be considered cancer free.  This is actually NOT the reason for my post but it is the trigger point that changed things for me.

It was a pretty simple recovery from the surgery.  I was up and going within a week.  The emotional portion of the recovery was the thing I just had no idea that would be so difficult.  It took me about a year to really digest what had happened to me, that I was ok, and to process through the fact that I would never really know WHY.  In that year, I really needed space from other people to process through that.

So about that year mark, I felt pretty at peace with what had happened but then I had started noticing some troubling changes in my overall health.  I went from pretty energetic to beyond exhausted.  I couldn't make it through the day without a nap and I was already sleeping 10 hours at night.  Then strange things like my hair and my lashes started thinning.  I was having a hard time digesting foods that I had never had a problem with.  I was putting weight on with a low calorie diet (we are talking less than 1000 a day!).  And then there was the COLD.  I could NEVER get warm.  Considering that it was January at this point, I just blamed it on the stupid winter weather.

I talked to my oncologist at my one year appointment about the symptoms.  He was pretty sure I was in peri-menopause due to the hysterectomy and he referred me to an endocrinologist.  I saw the endocrinologist and he told me that since I was so young, I wasn't a great candidate for hormone replacement  and thought that it was probably just going to take some time for me to balance out.  I took the laundry list of symptoms to him and he somewhat blew me off saying that I was just getting old (I was 32) and that I am adapting to my body's new normal without the hormones.

Frustrated, I went to another SIX MD's over the next year.  All to tell me, yeah your iron is low, take more iron, yeah, your Vit D is low, take more, your thyroid (TSH- it was a 5) is high, but its within acceptable ranges.  So at this point its been TWO YEARS of this, I had put on a total of 65 lbs in that time span, and I was beyond exhausted with getting no answers and feeling depressed and tired all the time.  I had been put on MORE anti depressant  and told to eat less.  Finally the very LAST endocrinologist I went to, I was literally in tears with frustration and told him that I KNOW that something is wrong,  and kind of like a last ditch effort- he referred me to a naturopath.  He warned me that insurance wont cover him but that this Dr has had great success with patients that they couldn't diagnosis in office.

I hesitantly made an appointment with the naturopath thinking, if a MD cant figure out what the heck is wrong with me, how can a naturopath?  I went into the office and filled out the paper work and sat and waited still internally rolling my eyes that I was even there.  Finally he came in and reviewed my symptoms with me and very clearly looked in my eyes and told me that he was pretty sure that I had an autoimmune disease called Hashimotos that was killing my thyroid.  I was stunned.  I had never heard even a mention of autoimmune diseases being brought up with any of my other doctors.  He explained what the symptoms were and I was mentally checking off all the boxes of symptoms I had in my head.  He ordered a HUGE lab be done to check everything possible and told me to come back in a week and we would know for sure what was happening.

I left the office and sat in my car and sobbed for 20 minutes.  It was the first time I felt NOT CRAZY leaving a doctors office in two years!  So I went and had the myriad of blood work done and came home and started researching what the heck Hashimotos was.  I remember spending a week just insanely reading through every article I could and finding blog posts of  other patients with this disease.  I finally felt like I wasn't crazy and that I had some light at the end of the tunnel.

A week later, we sat down to review my labs and sure enough, I had Hashimotos and my body was in a HUGE flare up at the time.  I found out that those silly little things like my Vit D and Iron being low were all connected to this and that it was quite common for Hashimotos patients to have a difficult time absorbing those vitamins.  We discussed my diet and he had a food intolerance test done.  Come to find out, eggs, sugar, gluten, diary and yeast were all huge inflammatory foods for me.  So even in small portions, they were affecting my bodys ability to function correctly.  I was in shock that I was finally making progress!  Part of me kept waiting for him to tell me it was all in my head and that I just needed to work out more.

I also found out that I can manage the disease but it will always be there and that I will still have flare ups from time to time.  I was just so excited to hear that I had answers that I think I kind of blocked that part out.  This was just so exciting to KNOW that I had an answer.  So I went two months of constantly improving and feeling excited to heal my body.  Then it hit in month three- the dreaded flare up.  It kicked my butt and I did NOT see it coming.  I was back in bed tired and feeling even MORE hopeless.  I kept having thoughts run through my head, "I'm always going to be sick, I'm never getting better, this is how the rest of my life is going to be, My poor kids and hubby don't deserve this" and the depression compounded ten fold.

I felt lower that I had before because I went from hope to sick again in a flash.  Within two weeks of following a diet, resting and seeing my Dr, I felt the fog start to lift.  It was an important lesson I learned though, YES, I am always going to have this disease and I am always going to struggle a little more to keep "normal" but NO, I wasn't always going to be SICK.  I could heal and get more answers.

I ended up having to go back to the Dr where this all started, the oncologists office for a check up.  I took all the labs in with me and showed him on paper that I wasn't crazy.  Are you ready for this????  He apologized!  Yes- he actually apologized and said that if he would have thought to do a more in depth panel he might have been able to find it two years earlier.  Come to find out- the stress and trauma of the hysterectomy triggered a response that started the whole Hashimotos flare up to begin with.  He said that its actually quite common with women who have had babies too.  He actually hugged me at the end of my appointment and said that he was sorry that I had struggled with this for two years and that it was a learning lesson for him as a Dr as well.

So there is all the physical side of what has been going on.  How does this tie back to mental health you ask?  Well, first off- Hashimotos can actually mimic symptoms of Bi-polar Depression.  I had been over medicated with anti-depressants and under medicated for thyroid disorder.  Once I got my thyroid replacements to a level that optimum for my body, my Bi-polar episodes really lifted and the depression wasn't quite as bad on a day to day basis.

So the lesson learned for me is that it all ties together.  There could be a much bigger answer to mental health struggles than just simply being under-medicated and under treated.  Mental health is such a personal struggle that I am not making claims to know the answers for everyone.  And at the end of all of this Mental Health IS Physical Health.  Mental health disorders are linked to imbalances of hormones and receptors.  So it could be much bigger than just taking a pill.

Don't ignore your trust in yourself.  If you FEEL like something is off- it most likely is.  No one in the world knows what it is like to live in your skin like you.  Trust in yourself!  I had a total of EIGHT MD's tell me that nothing was wrong with me before I found the ONE that confirmed that there was.  I am finally on a more consistent regimen of meds, supplements and diet and I finally feel like I have control back of my life.  Its been a long, hard 33 months but I have learned SO much about who I am, what I am in control of, how to treat myself in times of stress- that I wouldn't un-do it.