74 Degrees

Let's talk about my thyroid... (try to contain your excitement ;) It was high - 3.62, to be exact. I had no idea it was that high. So, apparently there's different scales to measure your TSH level, and doctors will argue over what's high and what's not, but for the sake of getting pregnant, my clinic said they wanted it around 1.0.  Well obviously 3.62 is not 1, so I had some work to do. They put me on levothyroxine for about a month now and it's been great.

Oh, so the title of the blog.. right. While it's not 74 degrees out at the moment (don't I wish it was), that's the temperature in our apartment. "Okay, so what?" you might say. Before taking this medication, I liked for the temperature to never go over 72. And even that was pushing it. I'd bring it down to 71 or even lower depending on the day. What this meant was that I couldn't tolerate heat. This is one of the classic signs of hypothyroidism.

Let's explore this a little - My basal body temperature (if you're a fellow TTCer, you know you've taken yours every morning for at least a few months), would generally hover around 97.5 in my follicular phase (pre-ovulation) and then 98.1 in my luteal phase (post ovulation). Now that's an average, but I've seen my BBT get as low as 96.7. Yikes. And sometimes it'd get higher than 98.1 but it was usually just for a day or two after I O'd.

I thought for sure this meant that I had a luteal phase defect. I clearly wasn't producing enough progesterone to sustain high temps and therefore I was losing a potential pregnancy each month. But no doctor ever bothered to check my thyroid. And low BBTs are a classic sign of hypothyroidism.

That was until Reprogenesis checked it. And I'm so glad they did because having a high TSH (anything about a 1.5 to 2) can cause miscarriage. Now my BBT has been 98.5 or higher when I wake up. This means that I'm not a giant pool of sweat whenever it creeps above 72 in our apartment.  This makes me happy. And it also makes me feel reassured that these doctors just might know what they're doing. :)

So the moral of my story is, have your doctor check your thyroid! You could be hypo and not even realize it!

I drank wine from the bottle last night.

I'm not proud of it, but it happened. And it wasn't as delicious as I'd hoped it be. Better luck next time, I guess.

Okay, I've been depressed. Not your typical "I had a bad day, it rained, I spilled coffee on my skirt, my dog chewed my favorite shoe" kind of depressed. No, more like, "It's noon and you actually want me to get out of bed?? What for?" Yeah, that kind.

Since getting off of Zoloft I've had a horrid time with withdrawal symptoms. Nausea, fatigue, anxiety, depression, random bouts of crying. It's been fun. It's tapered off a bit. I no longer have those crazy "brain zaps" they tell you about. I haven't felt  nauseous lately either. So that's been better.

But the depression.. Oh, the depression. I've been haunted by it. I have a little dark cloud over my head that follows me everywhere. Sometimes I forget that it's there and I can feel normal, but other times, it surrounds me.

I suppose it could have something to do with my Thyroid. I had my bloods stolen the other day and I sent the results to Reprogenesis. Apparently my TSH is super high. They want it to be around .5 to 1.5 for IVF. My TSH was 3.6. Yikes! According to the standard, anything about 2.5 is considered abnormal and potentially hypothyroid. I guess that explains why I have the stamina of an 80 year old lady.

Seriously, this is my very sad daily routine: I leave around 2:30 to go to the store. I head to Whole Foods and search for delicious things, then I drive over to Ulta and stare at the clearance aisle for about 30 minutes but buy nothing. I then head to the Christmas Tree Shop and walk around there for about 45 minutes. I buy whatever wonderfully cheap items they have there and then walk next door to Target where I proceed to purchase whatever items Christmas Tree Shop didn't have. Then I go to pick up my husband from work.

(Also, my day just sounded a lot more pathetic having written it out. Can you believe that this is what I do most days? How sad! What kind of person am I??? :( Ugh..)

As I walk out of Target to the car, I can't wait to collapse into the seat. I'm exhausted. I drive the 5 minutes to DH's workplace and wait in the parking lot to pick him up. But I don't even want to move at this point. We drive another 5 minutes home and I wish he could pick me up out of the car and walk me up the stairs to our apartment. I find my way to the couch and would love nothing more than to fall asleep and wake up 3 hours later.

This is not normal!!!! I am only 28!!!

But now I at least have an answer to why I tire so very, very easily. My TSH is out of control. Fortunately, they're sending me medication to bring it down. Apparently, a high TSH causes miscarriage. I'm glad they checked for it. Wake Forest never bothered to check. Surprise, surprise.

I hope that it'll help with my depression, or at least mask it by giving me super energy. I'll take any kind of help that I can get at this point.