For people who have had a thyroidectomy, fevers can be downright dangerous. There’s a reason that people who have thyroid problems also have body temperature problems - the thyroid is the organ that works with the hindbrain to control your body temperature. Mine, when things are normal, runs around 96 degrees, usually high 95s. So when I get a fever, not only is it VERY uncomfortable, there is also nothing to be done about it because I have no thyroid to be like “hey. It’s getting a little hot in here. Maybe have a little hormone and take a fever reducer and go to bed.” So fever reducing by medications doesn’t work because there’s no organ to tell my brain, “hey. She just took some fever reducer. Ease up, will ya?”
Two Saturdays ago, I was feeling tired, but ok. I went and ran a few errands and while I was out, my energy totally crashed. I was about 10 minutes from home, waiting in line at the coffee shop, and had to go home. Like immediately. That hadn’t happened in a while - to the point where I was running errands by myself again and I had started to regain trust in my own body to be able to go out and do a few things, so it was totally unexpected. (In the past, for about a year and a half post-thyroidectomy, Rob and I would have to run errands together so that when I invariably crashed, he’d be able to drive so I could sleep in the car. Yes, it was that bad.)
This felt familiar, so I got home prepared to relax and take a nap. Rob got home from the Penguin Plunge and we started to make plans and I said, “yeah, just let me take a nap,” and then proceeded to sleep for 15 hours. I woke up on Sunday feeling worse, and then on Monday, I went to urgent care the first time, knowing that they’d laugh me out the door if I went before being sick for 7 days, and even that was pushing it.
I knew I had a sinus infection. My teeth hurt, my ears hurt, I couldn’t stop sneezing and coughing, and I couldn’t move my eyes without it hurting quite a bit. I wasn’t having trouble breathing yet, but I knew that was next.
The doctor that I had was so dismissive that he didn’t look in my ears or even listen to my lungs. He just said, “yeah, you gave a virus that’s not COVID, RSV or the flu, but it’s going around. It lasts an average of 18 days. Go home and get some rest.”
COOL.
So, rest I did.
And then I rested more. During this time, in addition to the other shit, I lost my voice. (It still hasn’t returned.)
And then I cancelled my weekend because I both didn’t want to get others sick and didn’t want to cough my way through a show Rob and I had plans to see. I felt a little better, but I was Not Functional.
Yesterday came and I was able to get to work, but then I had the worst coughing fit yet, so I went to urgent care again.
The doctor listened to my lungs and was like “I’ll get a chest x-ray to confirm, but you have pneumonia.”
PNEUMONIA.
The medical rage is real, friends. I recently restarted EMDR to reprocess…just all of 2021… and my therapist was like “Ryan. Your medical rage is valid. You had migraines for 20 years that no one looked into and if they had, they would have found a BRAIN TUMOR. It doesn’t get much worse than that. Also you had concerns about thyroid stuff that no one listened to and it ended up that you had cancer, which would not have fully been found if you didn’t argue about whether or not to take your whole thyroid. YOU had to do that because almost every doctor in your adulthood has failed you. This is a systemic problem. It’s going to keep happening. I’m not sure EMDR will help with that part.”
Maybe she’s right. But I have to try because if I don’t, the rage that I feel about how I am treated by medical professionals literally feels like it’s going to swallow me whole sometimes. I have countless stories of “well if the doctor had just listened the first time, then this wouldn’t be a problem” throughout my lifetime, and so I need to be able to bracket my own reactivity to it and simply put, effectively start yelling.
Starting with calling patient services and making a complaint about that first doctor.
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