Tag Archives: weight gain

Jun 16 2016
6 Comments
Symptoms and Treatment

Still Waiting …

impatientNo thyroid tablets for six days now!

The weight should be dropping off!

Except, it isn’t.

I bumped into a passing acquaintance I hadn’t seen for a couple of years yesterday and we exchanged the usual, ‘how are you, so am I’.

I then waved my hands around my large body and apologised for my weight (why?). I seem to be doing that a lot over the last year or so. Embarrassment? Humiliation?

Anyway, I joked, ‘ah, pesky baby weight, lol.’

‘Aw, bless, you have a new baby?’ (I could see her mentally totting up how ancient I must be)

‘Nah, he’s 17 in August.’

‘Oh.’

I know I’m being impatient, but over the last eighteen months of thyroid tablets, I have packed on the weight. I am … massive … and I hate it. Don’t get me wrong, I never want to be skinny. I can’t quite believe I was a size 10 (ok, maybe 12) before The Teenager and I was perfectly happy with my curves and womanly figure. Right now, I’d settle for a 16.

But … this. This is unreal.

I hate mirrors. Mind you, I like mine – thank you Ikea. It’s just everyone else’s I hate. I leave the house thinking, ok, large but ok, turn to the left. Large but ok. Profile? Hmm. Then, like today, I see myself captured on one of those horrible CCTV cameras, waiting patiently to pick up a parcel at the depot. Who is that? And why did I even leave the house?

I’ve always believed it’s the person we are inside that should shine through, but try thinking that when you’re squeezing into fat jeans and a blouse that gives you a triple choc muffin top. It brings me down. I try to ease my shoulders back (not an inconsiderable task, given the size of my stomach) and sail when I walk. Glide. I will own this weight.

Nah. Doesn’t work.

I’ve never been beautiful, so it’s not an anguished cry for a lost nirvana. I just want to be me again. It’s as if my weight has galloped ahead and I don’t recognise myself. Shallow? Quite possibly? But when MS has already take so much from me, it would have been nice if it had left my metabolism alone.

Yet. In the back of my mind, in the depths of my despair, would I ever swap the treatment I had for zero thyroid problems? Not a chance. I’m not ungrateful. I’m just impatient.

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Jul 11 2015
4 Comments
Symptoms and Treatment

Fat, And Then Some

thyroidThere’s short straws. Then there’s short, fat straws.

The Alemtuzumab treatment I had for MS gave me odds of 1 in 3 that I would develop Grave’s Disease, a thyroid problem.

I was the 1.

At first, it was wonderful, as my loopy thyroid helped me shed pounds effortlessly. I was buoyed up with an incredible amount of energy (the Holy Grail for any MSer) and I sighed with sheer bliss as yet another pair of jeans were consigned to the growing Fat Pile, tucked away at the bottom of my wardrobe.

Enter the endocrinologist who took one look at my thyroid levels and immediately put a stop to my fun, effectively reversing then decelerating my over-active thyroid into a sluggish, bored, tired under-active thyroid.

I cried when I stepped on the scales. I snivelled when I rummaged around my Fat Pile. Every single day I gained a pound. I banished carbs and chocolate (gah) from my diet. I sipped green tea and swirled cinnamon sticks in my natural yoghurt.

I have a fairly physical job, so hoped against hope that this would offset the rapid weight gain. Nope. My Duracell-Bunny hyperactivity had morphed into slow-mo.

At my last meeting with the size-six endocrinologist, I’m not afraid to say I begged. I pleaded and put my case forward: the meds I was taking were of course sorting out the thyroid, but were ruining my life on two levels:

  • Relentless weight gain. I am now a blob of my former self.
  • Extreme lethargy and fatigue. Commonly known as, well, common MS symptoms, so I was having a double-whammy.

She had no mercy and told me I might be on them for a year. A year. At my current rate of weight-gain, I will be dressing in tents with holes cut in them for my head and arms.

It’s getting harder to keep going at work, as weight gain plus fatigue means it takes me hours to recover after just half a day in work. Never before has my nickname, ‘Half-Shift’ been more appropriate. My body and mind shut down at a certain point and I slump onto a pile of bricks, head in hands.

On the plus-side (lol), I am yet again radically over-hauling my diet in a desperate bit to put a stop to the pounds piling on even more than they already are. I have dusted off my kettle-bell. It’s still a door-stop, but I live in hope.

For now, I am experimenting with black clothes and dramatic scarves. Perhaps I should start wearing my heavy, black-rimmed reading glasses again, to draw attention away from my triple-choc muffin top.

And I will have insane pleasure in saying, ‘oh the fat? It’s my thyroid. Honest.’

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