Showing posts with label hyperthyroidism. Show all posts

Friday, July 4, 2014

I spent 3 weeks of my life, the maximum amount the health insurance company Blue Cross Blue Shield of Mississippi would pay for psychiatric hospitalization, in a psychiatric hospital with a toilet that would not flush properly. The labs my mother convinced them to do showed hyperthyroidism, but I was only given anti-psychotic medication which did nothing other than make my pee smell of cream-of-wheat.

The Thyroid and the Mind and Emotions/Thyroid Dysfunction and Mental Disorders

Please learn the symptoms of thyroid problems; hopefully, you will not have the catastrophic mind/body event I experienced at the end of 2012.

Signs and Symptoms

To find a qualified doctor: ThyroidChange.org

I'm still waiting for my appointment and hoping my mind and body will naturally balance in the meantime. I know problems need to be diagnosed when they are most acute.

Friday, June 27, 2014

Recollections of a Worse Time

She's a lunatic in her parents asylum.

Stolen away from this home in a violent way

I come to find out yesterday there was never a hope of a medical condition. My parents took the only route they could see through a system that solely deals with mental illness. I lingered in prison unnecessarily. I lingered waiting for a proper medical evaluation.

My behavior, as strange as it was, was all based upon the instincts of survival mixed with a little confusion over the sensory impute I was receiving. Try to play god to a child acting out of the ordinary. It is a lot easier than you could ever believe.

"Bitter much?" I ask myself often. "Why not, " is often my response.

I have a history of treatment for balancing hormones without ever a diagnosis. But, now I have the preexisting conditions of mental illness, a banner perhaps you could hold high, if you only knew in some places it gives people carte blanche to treat you as inhuman. The drugs they gave me did not help; they made my pee smell of cream-of-wheat.

Room 618 is where you linger with the amplified sound of the HVAC return retrofitted into the bedroom. Pink noise and noise of a co-ed dormitory with men loitering outside of the room. Exposed asbestos tile near the new motion activated sink.

Nothing but a flimsy shower curtain for the old toilet-shower room. The shower has been defunct for years with a rusted shower head and some previous inmate's litmus test strips littering the shower pan. The original matching blue toilet was replaced with a contemporary "comfort height" toilet which really is handicapping for a woman my size, under 5 foot tall.

The toilet never flushes correctly, though it makes a great attempt at it, not completely overflowing at every attempt at flushing. The water from the sink tastes of blood - too much iron. The main stack must be old cast iron and rusted innward. An expensive repair, I know, I've learned lots watching people flip houses on tv. I wish I could focus properly on a television in this place and escape in my mind, but what does it matter they have an awful, old television down the hall.

My body feels sea-sick. I am in a haze.

"Meditation Time" I read on the schedule posted outside the nurses station. Oh, I realize too late I'm the only yogini in the place.

"Medication Time," well, a mistake you can smile at today.

This was meant to be an "Health Center."

Post from June 19, 2014 - Aorta Pulse Hypersensitivity: The Human Metronome

Aorta Pulse Hypersensitivity: The Human Metronome

Thin as I've ever been

under the weight of puberty

pulsing loudly in my body and mind

the sound of the universe or a heart working overtime

my hips tick-tock back and forth like I am a human metronome

weakness in the spine is where my body is disjointed

hard to keep my footing as my torso and hips move to the pulse, but without a purpose

lying in my bed I feel as if I'm in my little ship

the wake of the waking attempts to lull me into sleep

in the bath you can see the pulse through the skin like a tom-tom drum kicking from within

every high and low of the heartbeat adding a new layer to the experience of time

In 2013, a cardiologist confirmed that what was overwhelming me was a hypersensitivity to the aorta pulse. He studied medicine in the military and said it was not uncommon in thin soldiers. He said they used to just cut men open to see if it was a aorta aneurism or just a hypersensitivity. They checked mine with an ultrasound. It has taken over a year to become less sensitive to this odd rhythmic feeling. It was complicated with the amplified sound of hyperthyroidism.

Post from January 9, 2013 - Temporary Hyperthyroidism

So, lab results and medical information trickle in . . .
Apparently I had hyperthyroidism about a month ago when I was in the place I affectionately refer to as "a deeper level of purgatory." The test from about 2 weeks ago still puts me in that category, but with much improvement. I've now put back on my womanly weight, so I'm probably fine on that front.
My blood pressure was around 90 over 80, a little low for me.
The pendulum movement in my torso is to the beat of my aorta pulsing in my abdomen. I'll try to ignore this for the time being . . .

Posting from January 8, 2013 - Chapter 1: thinking in old fashioned hypertext

This story begins the night of my cousin Elizabeth's wedding, the second week of November 2012. The wedding was outside of Hammond, Louisiana. I did not sleep that night. I could not remember sleeping a full night's sleep from Saturday, November 10 through about December 10 or 15. I can't remember the first night I actually slept more than 3 hours straight.

The night after November 10 (the 11th, I believe) I remember my mind and heart racing. I remember dancing the dances from the Buffy episode "Once More with Feeling," which was the musical put together by Adam Shankman. I was in my bedroom probably wearing some just below the knee length leggings. I dance both the parts of Buffy and her younger sister Dawn. I danced and danced. Adam Shankman is also a judge on my favorite summer television show So You Think You Can Dance. So, I went into a Bollywood style dance, as well.

I was having the best time of my life playing in my bedroom.

Then, I thought why is my mind working so quickly? Why am I linking all of these memories and facts that are stored in my mind? I am thinking in old fashioned hypertext. Why are all of these memories of my life coming to the forefront of my mind? Why am I thinking about experiences of my past with such great clarity?

Is this enlightenment? I had been meditating instead of sleeping the night before (the 11th or the 12th?).

Then, I thought about one of my favorite television shows Doctor Who. It is a science-fiction show in which the Doctor travels through time and space trying never to double back on his own timeline.

There was an episode in which a daughter is made from his DNA sample, and she skips childhood. She dies at the end instead of regenerating - as far as he knows. But, the show ends with her being brought back to life after The Doctor has already left and moved on to his next destination.

So, I was thinking am I a daughter lost in time and space?

Perhaps.

In the show Doctor's Daughter named Jenny does gymnastics through a laser beam grid.

I began doing what any yogini would do. I began practicing my inversions: handstands and armbalancing and headstands, too. These came with greater ease than they had ever come before.

This was one of the best experiences of my life.

However, I was really hungry and thirsty, too.

All of the food and water began tasting strangely. I felt like it was poisoned. Some tasted, perhaps, like rat poison (no, I've never tasted that before). Some tasted like iodine or formaldehyde. I kept searching for water and food that tasted correctly - like how I remember. It was very confusing. And, I panicked at this point.

Finally, I found some dark chocolate and that was my safe food along with sardines. I dumped the sardines in a bowl for me and a bowl for Orlan and did my best to keep us hydrated.

I worried that the cats were dying. I worried that I was dying.

My heart was racing and beating arhythmically.

I tried listening to my CDs and none of them sounded correctly. They seemed all garbled and tortured and ruined. The lyrics were changed.

Was this a living nightmare? A day-mare? This is what it seemed to me.

One point in time I was a fabulous yogini. The next point in time I was in a panic to save myself and all of the cats in the house.

Dad laid in his recliner with his cat Flash; she keeping watch over him.

Mom was speaking like a frightened girl who had just lost her father to cancer -- not allowed to visit him in the hospital and say her goodbyes.

What really happened? Perhaps my story is the truth. It is after all my story.

The food problem freaked me out the most. My safe foods kept becoming unsafe, tasting differently.

I'll end this posting here. There are a lot more details and things I remember. I'm just taking my time writing them down. The chronology probably will never be perfect.