The Battle With Graves' Disease Part VIII : Life 1 Year After Surgery

After I have removed my mutated thyroid gland, I feel as if a curse has been lifted from my life. I feel somewhat more positive and many of the activities I have been working on seems to have also broken out from their curse of stagnation.

Although I have to be on hormone replacement therapy for the rest of my life, I was pretty happy with the state of things now.

A few months back, I watched a couple of zombie apocalypse shows and I wondered how long will I survive in the case that I am unable to get hold of my hormone replacement drugs after the world has been overrun by zombies. 

So I jokingly asked my doctor," Doc, how long will I survive if I stop taking my hormone pills?"

Alarmed, my doc said, "What!? Are you planning to stop taking your medication?" 

"Nay, I just want to find out how long will I last in case of a zombie apocalypse."

"Hmmm, if you stop taking medication totally, your body will slowly break down and you will slip into a coma. Soon your heart will stop. That will take around 1 year."

"1 year sounds good! Enough time to find some shot guns and butcher some zombies!"

I have obviously played too many zombie killing video games too...

1 year down the road, I started to feel the effects of hypothyroidism more acutely. 

I wake up almost always in a bad mood. 

The reason being is that I have to replenish my hormone levels every morning via medication as the thyroid hormone is often at the lowest level on waking up. I communicate in head nods and shakes for the first half an hour each day before I feel human enough to communicate with another fellow human being without insulting the shape of his nose. 

When I was young, I was well known to be "cool as cucumber". Cool as not being the handsome hippy cool, but I have such a good temperament that it takes a lot to anger or weep. However, these days, I feel more "emo" than before and I started to lose my immunity towards sob movies. I can feel the gears of my tear glands starting to move and turn during the touching moments of the movie. 

On the medication side, my hormone level have not found a balance with my medication yet. There is a lot of trial and error to get the perfect dosage.

A just woken up selfie in my PJs. Grumpy but have to smile for the camera

A closer look at the scar

For example, I was taking 125mg of thyroxin daily and my hormone level went too high. The dosage was adjusted upwards with a dosage of 100mg for 4 days and 125mg for 3 days. Results still not optimal and I am currently on 100mg for 3 days and 125mg for 4 days. Sometimes, I get confused which day I should take 125 and which day I should take 100.

One of the other major side effect is the problem of hair loss. I have a pretty high forehead to start with and the loss of hair makes my forehead even higher. I have comtemplated a couple of times to go for the sexy egg head look but have not gotten the courage to try that yet.

Perhaps sometime down the road....

In any case, My battle with Graves' Disease will continue on for the rest of my life, but I am optimistic that things have changed for the better ever since the surgery.

It is also quite good to know that I can put my zombie killing skills (from computer games) to use for at least a year, or I might just turn into a mutated powerful zombie, thanks to my current medical condition and be the zombie boss. That should be quite cool!

To read about the entire Battle with Graves' Disease saga, click here

Being a Zombie Boss should be cool!