A few things I have learned...

Have you ever been in a situation where you don't really appreciate something until it stops working? For instance, you never realized how valuable your big toe is until you break it and can't stand upright, or you never appreciated your ability to swallow until you have strep throat and can't even get water down?

For me, I never appreciated my thyroid until it stopped working. Last week I went to my doctor, desperate to figure out why my heart rate was all over the map, why my appetite has been absent the last 2 weeks, and why I just felt plain lousy. It turns out that despite my diagnosis of Hypothyroid disease 8 years ago, a significant piece of information was missing. I have something call Hashimoto's Thyroiditis. A big fancy way for saying that my thyroid is attacking itself and causing havoc on the rest of my body's systems. So after lots of needle pokes, complicated tests, and a bit of worrying, we finally know what is going on. PRAISE GOD!

I am so thankful for the wonderful doctors I worked with last week and the amazing family and friends I am surrounded by. The treatment for such diagnosis is similar to what I am currently doing: taking Thyroid replacement medicine. The other option is to minimize the function of my thyroid by 'killing' it with radioactive iodine which would make future trips to the endocrinologist a lot less nerve wracking, but we'll leave that to the doctors to decide.

So now I have much more appreciation for my body and the little pieces that keeps everything on track. To my thyroid... thank you for teaching me a big life lesson of self- appreciation.